Collaboration

Michigan State University broke ground in June of 2015 on an $88.1 million biomedical research facility in the Grand Rapids Innovation Park. The six-story, 162,800-sf project will provide the College of Human Medicine with open labs to support up to 44 research teams. Designed by SmithGroupJJR with Ellenzweig as laboratory design consultant, the facility will feature core labs for flow cytometry, bioinformatics, microscopy, and long-term storage.

Cincinnati Children's Hospital opened the $205 million Clinical Sciences Pavilion in June of 2015. The 15-story, 445,000-sf translational research tower will house over 1,500 scientists, clinicians, and staff engaged in the application of medical discoveries to patient care. The facility features a three-story atrium, a clinical trials center, advanced imaging suites, and laboratories and offices arranged in research neighborhoods to foster interaction and collaboration. Construction began on the pavilion in 2012.

Purdue University will begin construction in July of 2015 on the $79 million Thomas S. and Harvey D. Wilmeth Active Learning Center in West Lafayette, Ind. The 164,000-gsf facility will provide 27 classrooms as well as housing six engineering and science libraries. Designed by BSA LifeStructures to promote interdisciplinary collaboration, the center will feature flexible classrooms that can act as group study spaces in the evenings. Completion is expected in August of 2017.
 

Ferris State University will open the Shimadzu Core Laboratory for Academic and Research Excellence in fall of 2015. Located in the Arts and Sciences Complex in Big Rapids, Mich., the facility will include seven new instruments supplied by the Shimadzu Corporation with a total value of $500,000. The core lab will feature advanced spectrophotometry equipment to support student research in chemistry, physics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and forensic science.

Northwestern University broke ground on the Louis A. Simpson and Kimberly K. Querrey Biomedical Research Center in Chicago in May of 2015. Designed by Perkins+Will, the 14-story, 600,000-sf facility will support collaborative research on cancer, heart disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and genetics for the Feinberg School of Medicine. The Biomedical Research Center will house nine laboratory floors of approximately 45,000 sf each with integrated offices for principal investigators.

Responding to the call to reinvent university science instruction, Virginia Tech’s new classroom building is poised to create “a bona fide learning revolution.” Slated for completion in 2016, the 73,400-sf facility will offer flexible, innovative teaching spaces that are “radically different” from anything previously seen on the Blacksburg campus, according to Jill Sible, assistant provost for undergraduate education at the largest producer of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) degrees in the state.

Purdue University is initiating three construction projects for the College of Engineering in West Lafayette, Ind. Work will begin in 2016 on an $8.2 million expansion of the Maurice J. Zucrow Laboratories to create a 9,600-sf research suite featuring five new test cells supporting laser-based measurement. Other projects include the $54 million, 75,000-sf Flex Lab, a multidisciplinary, team-based research facility, and the Innovation Design Center, a 24-hour student project building featuring CAD labs and collaboration areas.

IU Health, Indiana University, and IU Bloomington Hospital are partnering to create a new regional academic health center. Located adjacent to the IU Technology Park, the project includes construction of a replacement facility for IU Health Bloomington Hospital and an instructional building for the Indiana University School of Medicine. The regional academic health complex will promote collaboration between faculty, researchers, clinicians, medical staff, and students. Design work will begin in late spring of 2015.

Concordia College is planning to create an integrated science complex in Moorhead, Minn. Designed by EYP Architecture and Engineering and Foss Architecture, the $45 million project includes the complete renovation of two conjoined facilities totaling 108,000 sf and construction of a three-story, 58,000-sf atrium. The complex will support collaborative, discovery-based learning in mathematics and the sciences with neighborhoods of classrooms, laboratories, and offices interspersed with informal study and social spaces.

The University of Toledo’s Interprofessional Immersive Simulation Center is equipped with an i-Space™—the world’s first five-sided seamless LED virtual reality center for medical training, education, and research—and a virtual hospital outfitted with human patient simulators, state-of-the-art clinical equipment, and observation, control and debriefing rooms. The five-sided CAVE required a four-inch-thick glass floor weighing two tons.

SUNY Polytechnic Institute is partnering with the New York Power Authority to create the Advanced Grid Innovation Laboratory for Energy (AGILe) in Albany, N.Y. Supporting collaborative energy infrastructure research, the facility will enable the simulation, development, testing, and deployment of advanced electrical grid technologies.

To achieve the most viable, successful workspaces, companies need to look closely at the factors that most directly influence their work culture instead of following the latest design trends, according to Kay Sargent, director of workplace strategies at Lend Lease. No single workplace design fits every company, and a workspace should fit the people using it, as well as the organizational goals.

The University of Toledo’s Interprofessional Immersive Simulation Center (UT-IISC) represents a new technology-driven approach to educating tomorrow’s healthcare professionals. Utilizing state-of-the-art virtual reality environments, the UT-IISC provides interactive and experiential environments for training, education, and research. Giving students, researchers, and clinicians the unprecedented ability to “fly through” organs of the body and visualize them in highly detailed digital 3-D, the center was developed to improve patient safety as well as efficiencies in healthcare. 

George Washington University opened the $275 million Science and Engineering Hall in March of 2015 in Washington, D.C. Located on the Foggy Bottom campus, the 500,000-sf interdisciplinary facility provides classrooms, integrated core facilities, and collaborative research spaces. Designed by Ballinger, the facility houses laboratories for biomedical engineering, nanofabrication, molecular genetics, imaging, and environmental engineering. The three-story high bay lab will support structural testing for large-scale construction components.

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.