Space Use

The University at Albany, State University of New York (UAlbany) has developed a rigorous new process for allocating space to improve utilization, decrease operating costs, and create more collaborative research environments capable of attracting high-quality researchers and students. The initiative was triggered in part by a growing influx of students and faculty and the creation of two new colleges—the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity; and the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The new space allocation and management process helps reduce the role politics plays in decision-making and better aligns facility use with university goals. The basis for the process is an understanding that campus space is a valuable limited resource that should be strategically deployed to achieve specific measurable goals, just like staffing or capital.

The University of Missouri (MU) will eliminate 750,000 sf of education and general facilities space by 2023 in order to reduce costs and improve overall space quality and utilization. The initiative will allow the university to save approximately $153 million in deferred maintenance, capital renewal, and plant adaption costs, as well as about $5 million in annual operating costs. It’s an ambitious undertaking, considering that the 1,200-acre main campus in Columbia, Mo., has 7 million sf of education and general facility space spread across 185 major buildings. To meet the 10 percent reduction goal over the next four years, the university will strategically demolish, divest, relocate, and rebuild a data-driven selection of aging or under-utilized buildings.

Almost every field of endeavor has been supercharged in recent years by the advent of “big data”—the ability of computers to process and analyze large data sets to gather insights. The business of creating student spaces on campuses is no different. June Hanley and Scott Foral of HDR have used big data in several projects, and offer some wisdom on how to turn raw data into actionable results.

Churn—it’s the constant, costly reality of research space utilization, with a price tag that’s often underestimated. Also underestimated? The opportunity for organizations to realize cost savings, operational streamlining, and overall efficiencies amid the inevitable swapping of research teams and space during renovations and equipment relocations, asserts Mark Allen, AIA, architect and principal at Wilson HGA; and Jeanne MacLellan, principal of Dowling Houy. “Even with a client who’s in the midst of a renovation, we know that, in three to four years, they are going to be renovating again,” explains MacLellan. “We’re not eliminating churn and its inefficiencies; we’re maximizing options now that will minimize its impact down the road.”

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.

The vast array of Internet of Things (IoT) technology on the market today can tempt facility planners to install the latest gadget just because it is available. IoT technology offers a variety of tools, such as sensors and software that can be added to furniture or other facility assets, to allow these assets to connect and exchange data using built-in wireless connectivity. But to what end? Brian Haines, vice president of strategy for FM:Systems, cautions planners to look beyond the allure of new technology and to carefully assess which sensor or combination of sensors will produce data that advances specific institutional goals or addresses immediate facility concerns.  

Educating healthcare professionals in a manner that crosses disciplines and fosters teamwork for the advancement of public health is more than a mission statement for Nova Southeastern University (NSU) in Florida. It is an inherent objective in recent and ongoing construction projects on the main Davie Campus in Fort Lauderdale and at the regional campuses in Jacksonville; Miami; Miramar; Orlando; Palm Beach; Fort Myers; Tampa; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Exponential growth in the use and development of genetically engineered rodent models during the last several decades has resulted in researchers at many institutions requiring ever-increasing amounts of vivarium space. However, new technologies will drive different design considerations and space planning in future rodent facilities, says Neil S. Lipman, professor and executive director of the Center of Comparative Medicine and Pathology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medicine.

Imagine a baby born today. She’s smart and science-minded. Through good luck and hard work, she earns her doctorate early, and by age 31, she is solidly embarked on a research career. What does her lab look like? That’s what two SmithGroup thought leaders—Adam Denmark, director of Laboratory Planning, and Steve Palumbo, Science and Technology Studio leader—sought to find out with their team members though a yearlong research initiative they called LAB2050. Collectively, the SmithGroup team and their client advisors defined six categories that they used to project current trends forward—technology, funding and partnerships, energy and the environment, collaboration, synergies, and planning and design—and to visualize the new ones that might emerge.

Asking a company to define its culture often results in an ambiguous response, but answering that question is key to addressing business concerns with the most effective workplace and organizational design solutions. Organizational strategies reflect the structure of the business, can identify workflow and system inadequacies, and should support workplace design. Assessing a company’s business objectives, functional needs, space utilization, necessary workplace improvements, user requirements, and operating capabilities can be instrumental in making the best design decisions. This approach is built on a foundation of viewing design as an enterprise-level service capable of solving business problems, and not just real estate issues.

The University of Notre Dame’s Campus Crossroads project, compleletd in 2017, transforms the iconic Notre Dame football stadium into a vibrant multi-use campus hub and student center with near constant activity. As the largest, most ambitious construction project in the university’s 175-year history, the stadium remodel includes the addition of three new adjacent buildings that provide more than 800,000-sf of academic, athletic, and student life space designed to increase interaction and wellbeing.

Universities across the country are looking to assemble students and faculty from different research interests in spaces that promote cross-disciplinary collaboration. Successful designs call for exteriors that beckon the entire campus community and flexible interior features that enable the institution to refresh the mix of researchers and projects at regular intervals. Such projects also call for encouraging a campus-wide sense of ownership of the building while establishing a space application review process. Opened in January 2017, the University of Idaho’s $52 million Integrated Research and Innovation Center (IRIC) works to accomplish these goals through building design choices and ongoing space management decisions. Randy Benedict, design leader and principal at NBBJ, and Russell McClanahan, IRIC facility manager, describe how those two activities—design and building management—work to make the IRIC a hub of interdisciplinary interactions at the campus in Moscow, Idaho.

Colleges and universities are rethinking their workplaces to align their space with how people work today and to use space to achieve their strategic goals. Beyond macro forces reshaping higher education in terms of access, accountability, and financial stability, there is a confluence of financial, environmental, technological, and cultural factors prompting this change, including increasing numbers of administrative staff and a growing disengagement among faculty and staff. But the most common mistake that institutions make when trying to change their workplace is assuming that they are trying to solve a space problem. Even if the impetus for a project is a space problem—you’re out of space and have no place to put the new faculty or staff member you just hired!—you won’t solve it by thinking about it that way. It’s more complex and nuanced than that. What you need first is a workplace strategy, a coherent statement that describes how your space will be used to help you achieve your larger strategic goals.

Clients look to architects to help them make decisions regarding the built environment that can greatly impact the future of their institutions and their employees. Doing that successfully depends on the quality of information used to make those critical decisions. Collecting comprehensive data from multiple sources, substantiating it with research, and analyzing it with proprietary software developed by HDR enables the firm to provide clients with the kinds of customized information necessary to make sound decisions and help predict building performance.