Latest Reports

Boston College (BC) is putting the finishing touches on its new 157,000-sf Integrated Science Building, which will house the college’s new Human Centered Engineering program, as well as the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, the Computer Science Department, and the Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship. Together, they will advance the college’s mission to pursue the sciences through a liberal arts lens, focusing on solving complex societal problems in energy, environment, and health. The facility, which will house 22 faculty, represents the largest single investment in the sciences in BC’s history.

The University of Kansas (KU) faced a daunting challenge: more than 11 million sf of facilities in 150 buildings whose average age was 45 years and a deferred maintenance backlog exceeding $350 million. At the same time, the university’s strategic plan set a goal of increasing research and discovery, and the resulting campus master plan prioritized the need for new research facilities. Realizing that goal while addressing the existing challenges could have taken decades using traditional funding models. The solution? The Integrated Science Building, KU’s $180 million large-scale public-private partnership (P3) for interdisciplinary campus development, which is breaking new ground in funding models, integration, management structure, and fundraising activities. With this initiative, the university took a “great leap forward” in academic and research programs, design decisions, space allocations, programming, and critical infrastructure upgrades, as well as making a bold step with the project delivery.

The four-story expansion of the 1980s-era Murchie Science Building at the University of Michigan-Flint adds 68,000 sf of state-of-the art research labs, maker space, and instructional and collaboration spaces that create a sense of community for the largely non-traditional commuter student population. The building, with its glass lobby, is a gateway to the campus and a symbol of the emphasis that the liberal arts university places on STEM education.

Faculty in higher education often spend less than 20 percent of their workday at their assigned desks, so why do they still have them? It is a question that academic administrators are asking, as they look for ways to provide building occupants with the spaces they need to do their work and the autonomy to select the right space for the right task, all within an increasingly constrained campus footprint. Corporate offices have been making the transition to unassigned seating for years now, and despite trepidation, there are signs that academia may be following suit: In a recent survey of 88 U.S. colleges and universities (conducted by the Society for College and University Planning and brightspot, a Buro Happold company), about 62 percent of respondents said they are pursuing more flexible or unassigned workspaces for administrative staff, and 54 percent are planning to do so for academic work facilities, as well.

Occupancy restrictions are being lifted across the country, and companies and institutions are anxious to get back to business. But it’s clear that for many, the workplace will never look the same. After a year-and-a-half of maintaining only a virtual presence in the office, classroom, and to some extent even the lab, employees want to retain some of the autonomy and flexibility they discovered while working remotely. And employers, who have learned that much of the corporate and academic mission can be fulfilled from anywhere without sacrificing productivity, want to make better use of their space. One likely scenario going forward is a hybrid workplace—a combination of remote and in-person activity. In a recent Tradeline survey of 155 individuals at 115 organizations nationwide, 76 percent of the respondents named hybrid workplaces as their top space planning and management priority.