Latest Reports

Johns Hopkins University’s 105,000-sf Undergraduate Teaching Labs (UTL) replace outdated, dispersed facilities with a single building that increases collaboration across scientific disciplines and offers a new model for research and education. The visually stunning UTL collocates all teaching laboratories for the departments of biology, chemistry, neuroscience, and biophysics, with a shared instrument core. The facility also contains dedicated “project labs” that provide a platform for undergraduate students to participate in actual research.

Cheyney University, located 25 miles west of Philadelphia and founded in 1837 as the Institute of Colored Youth (ICY), is the oldest of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities in America. The state-of-the-art Science Center, the first new academic building constructed on campus in 35 years, houses chemistry, biology, physics, and computer laboratories; seminar and lecture rooms; faculty offices; classrooms for the University’s Department of Natural and Applied Sciences; a planetarium; and an external greenhouse.

Just one year after Wellesley College trustees approved a long-term campus renewal plan, the college had three projects in construction and six in design. In all, some $137 million worth of work, roughly 25 percent of the total plan, is currently underway, thanks to Wellesley’s bold approach: At once sweeping and granular, the process departed from traditional master planning by employing multiple architecture firms and incorporating up front many activities typically not seen months or even years into the design workstream.

The 89,700-sf, seven-story expansion of the Wistar Institute increases research space from 30 to 45 labs, with new support areas, including tissue culture rooms, fume hood alcoves, equipment alcoves, and a shared cold room. Each of the five lab floors contains an open-plan research lab for four professors and their research teams of 35 to 40 to work collaboratively on cancer research, genetics, and vaccine development. Flexible, moveable lab benches will accommodate changing research needs.

Near net-zero energy usage is achievable for laboratory buildings only by employing a holistic approach that examines how all the available energy-saving technologies work together before focusing on a few, high-impact concepts. These concepts not only reduce energy costs by 50 percent or more, but also can significantly reduce upfront costs. Employed piecemeal, however, they can backfire.