Sustainability

The New School will open its $372 million University Center in New York in January of 2014. The facility will act as an interdisciplinary hub for all of the university's programs. The 16-story, 375,000-sf building includes seven floors of academic space with dormitories on the remaining nine. Designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the facility will provide a 600-seat auditorium, flexible classrooms, lecture halls, learning studios, a library, student and faculty resource rooms, and an event café.

Trident Technical College will open a 90,000-sf science and nursing building in January of 2014 in North Charleston, S.C. The $30 million facility will feature a 291-seat tiered lecture hall that can be divided into smaller instructional spaces, as well as teaching labs, classrooms, a clinical simulation suite, and a nursing resource center. LEED Silver sustainable design certification will be sought for the building. The project team included design architect LS3P Associates and general contractor China Construction America.

University Hospital of Northern B.C. broke ground in December of 2013 on the Northern Health Learning and Development Centre in Prince George. Developed in partnership with the Province of British Columbia, the University of Northern British Columbia, and the University of British Columbia, the $10 million project will provide a clinical simulation center, seminar rooms, a library, and video conferencing suites for advanced medical instruction and training.

Northeastern University will break ground in January of 2014 on a $225 million science and engineering research facility in Boston. The six-story, 220,000-sf building will provide open wet and dry labs, classrooms, faculty offices, a 280-seat auditorium, and an atrium. Designed by Payette, the interdisciplinary facility will house advanced instrumentation for shared use by the colleges of science, engineering, health sciences, and computer and information science. LEED sustainable design certification will be sought for the project.

Trios Health is building the $112 million Southridge Hospital in Kennewick, Wash. Designed by PKA Architects of Portland, the four-story, 168,000-sf facility will feature a daylight basement with a restaurant, 74 beds in 300-sf private rooms, 14 intensive care beds, and 27 trauma and emergency rooms. The hospital will also provide an advanced imaging suite and six 640-sf operating rooms. C.D. Smith Construction began building the sustainably designed facility in 2012 and occupancy is expected in late spring of 2014.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) opened the $25 million Science and Engineering Laboratory Building in fall of 2013. Designed by BSA LifeStructures in conjunction with Blackburn Architects, the collaborative 45,000-sf facility houses multidisciplinary research labs, classrooms for the School of Science and the School of Engineering and Technology, meeting rooms, and administrative space.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) today announced the release in November of 2013 of seven new Sustainable Projects (SP) contract documents. The release includes SP versions of the AIA’s two families of Construction Management documents, Construction Manager as Adviser (CMa) and Construction Manager as Constructor (CMc), as well as B103–2007 SP, Standard Form of Agreement Between Owner and Architect for a Large or Complex Sustainable Project.

The New York City College of Technology broke ground on a 365,000-sf academic complex in October of 2013. The eight-story facility will provide laboratories, classrooms, faculty offices, clinics, and support spaces to enhance the College’s health and science curriculum in radiology, dental hygiene, nursing, biological sciences, biomedical research, chemistry, restorative dentistry, and vision care.

The University of Nottingham began construction in October of 2013 on the $32 million Centre for Sustainable Chemistry in the United Kingdom. Designed by Fairhursts Design Group and created in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline, the 48,000-sf carbon-neutral building will provide research labs, a teaching lab, and instrumentation suites. The facility will be located in the University's Innovation Park and will accommodate 100 investigators.

Vassar College is constructing the $125 million Integrated Science Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The project includes a new 80,000-sf teaching and research building designed by Ennead Architects that will bridge a ravine. Three existing facilities will also be renovated. Supporting programs in earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics, the Integrated Science Center will feature the collaborative Earth and Environment Lab housing two faculty research labs, a shared teaching lab, a cleanroom, a coldroom, and a student-faculty joint use lab.

Samsung Research America broke ground in October of 2013 on its new research and development campus in Mountain View, Calif. The 385,000-sf project includes two six-story office buildings and will be constructed to attain a minimum of LEED Gold sustainable design certification. Occupancy is expected in December of 2014. Samsung Research America is a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Rowan University broke ground in October of 2013 on a $71 million addition to the College of Engineering in Glassboro, N.J. The three-story, 90,500-sf building is slated for completion in 2017.

Drexel University opened the $92 million LeBow Hall in Philadelphia in October of 2013. Housing the LeBow College of Business, the 12-story, 177,500-sf facility features a five-story atrium, a 300-seat auditorium, a 100-seat lecture hall, and a financial trading lab. The building also provides 17 classrooms, faculty offices, student lounges, a seminar room, and a behavioral studies lab. The facility was designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York and Voith & MacTavish Architects of Philadelphia.

The following is a condensed transcript of a panel discussion from Tradeline’s 2013 International Conference on Research Facilities. The panelists are William Gustafson, principal at Ballinger; Steven Frei, principal at Affiliated Engineers, and Michael Reagan, vice president of Stantec. The moderator is Steve Westfall, founder and CEO of Tradeline.

The Karolinksa Institute will begin construction in late 2013 on the $190 million Biomedicum research facility in Solna, Sweden. The project team includes developer Akademiska Hus, Berg/C.F. Møller Architects, and general contractor Skanska. Providing open, flexible labs for biomedical research, the 678,000-sf interdisciplinary facility will also house offices, conference rooms, and a large central atrium.