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Planning for the new Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital (JHACH) Research and Education Building in St. Petersburg, Fla., took place before all the building users were identified, and used strategies like identifying the business and design drivers to support collaboration, innovation, and communication. “The vision was to create a state-of-the-art space for pediatric health research and education, in a building that would draw people out of their offices and into the collaborative areas, to teach, work, and communicate,” says Roberta Alessi, executive vice president and chief operating officer at JHACH.

The Children’s Research Institute (CRI), the research arm of Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., has seen its research programs expand, bringing the need to accommodate more staff and projects. A new innovation campus is in the works, but the move to the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center Campus will take four years to complete. The institute is therefore focusing on laboratory densification, both in the current space and the new campus.

Northwestern University is continually working to grow and improve the quality of its research space inventory. A 2017 renovation and expansion of the Seeley G. Mudd Science and Engineering Library—situated in a prime location on the Evanston, Ill., campus—transformed a non-science building into a focal point of the university’s science complex. A desire to maximize research space within the constrained site resulted in a unique solution that leveraged both horizontal and vertical expansion.

Changing needs for vivariums have presented facilities managers with an array of challenges: creating more space for housing research animals within existing facilities; ensuring that the environments in which animals are kept meet guidelines set by scientific research agencies and organizations; and ensuring the spaces in which researchers conduct their experiments host well-run vivariums that contribute to, rather than inhibit, the ability to reproduce their results. Manufacturers are responding to these needs with more space-efficient caging systems, more precise and cost-effective environmental controls for animal holding rooms, and technology that can automatically track the health of animals in cages.

Multi-disciplinary project-based learning has changed how and where student activities occur, and institutions have responded by creating novel labs, teaching facilities, gathering areas, and maker spaces designed for students and faculty across diverse disciplines—engineering, life sciences, and liberal arts. A number of projects throughout the country highlight important design considerations—including location, flexibility, adaptability, and transparency—that suit new ways of learning and provide universities with opportunities for marketing and recruitment. Post-occupancy data from the University of North Carolina provides real-world findings that can help others improve the design of current and future maker spaces.