Biomedical

Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis is planning to break ground on a $75 million research building in summer of 2013. The 138,000-sf interdisciplinary facility will provide flexible, open labs for the Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology and the departments of medicine, genetics, and developmental biology. The design team includes Goody Clancy of Boston in association with Christner of St. Louis. Clayco is the general contractor. Completion is expected in June of 2015.

Emory University began occupying the $90 million Health Sciences Research Building in Atlanta in June of 2013. Designed by ZGF Architects and built by Brasfield & Gorrie, the 200,000-sf facility provides open labs for research on immunology and vaccines, neurosciences, drug discovery, pediatric health, cancer, gastroenterology, biomedical engineering, and human genetics.

A new 100,000-sf, four-story medical education and research building—coupled with 70,400 sf in renovations to the existing Jones Institute/Lewis Hall/Brickell Library complex and a new landscaped courtyard—has allowed Eastern Virginia Medical School to increase enrollment in the medical doctoral program by 30 percent, to 150 students, and in the physician assistant program by 60 percent.

The University at Albany opened a $9.4 million biomedical laboratory in June of 2013. Accommodating 60 researchers, the collaborative 15,000-sf facility provides five 1,000-sf labs, advanced imaging equipment, and glass-walled offices for the RNA Institute. The project was built by AOW Associates with fully mobile lab benches for ease of reconfiguration. LEED Silver sustainable design certification will be sought for the facility, which features a heat recovery system, sophisticated building controls, and abundant natural light.

Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences at UC Berkeley serves about 450 researchers in the fields of cancer biology, infectious diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and stem cell biology. They are pursuing a multi-disciplinary approach to studying the molecular basis of these illnesses in order to research the root causes of diseases such as cancer, HIV, tuberculosis, and Alzheimer’s.

Research space at academic institutions increased 3.5 percent from fiscal year 2009 to 2011, one of the lowest two-year growth rates since a peak in 2001-03, according to the National Science Foundation's (NSF) most recent Survey of Science and Engineering Research Facilities. In that time period—the most recent data the NSF has—institutions planned fewer projects, and fewer projects came to fruition, an indicator that this "slow growth" trend will continue. The main growth area continued to be the biological and biomedical sciences.

Continued signs of stable economic growth indicate that the recovery is gaining momentum in many parts of the United States and Canada. Construction selling prices for institutional projects grew at a 6 percent annualized rate in 2012, on top of a 3 percent increase in 2011. Construction costs are expected to continue stabilizing and rising in many regions as market confidence and capital spending increase.

The Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory expanded and renovated its 19,500-sf laboratory in Amarillo to add a BSL-3 suite, the state's second such laboratory dedicated to animal disease diagnosis. The lab is designed to function primarily as a BSL-2, but contains built-in features and SOPs that allow it to convert to BSL-3 in the event of a suspected outbreak of a highly contagious animal and/or zoonotic disease.

Spurred into action by a broken autoclave, Rush University Medical Center gutted and rebuilt its 30-plus-year-old BSL-3 lab and its anteroom, while converting existing adjacent offices into a dedicated mechanical room. The primary goals with the renovation were to bring the lab up to contemporary BSL-3 standards and to isolate its infrastructure and utilities from the rest of the Jelke Building, a mixed-use lab and patient-care building.

The Gates Vascular Institute (GVI) transforms the concept of translational collaboration, uniting not only a private health entity with a public institution, but also patients, physicians, researchers, educators, industry, and government within a state-of-the-art vertical campus. The building brings together, through a unique public/private partnership, the heart, vascular, and emergency facilities of Kaleida Health; the Clinical Translational Research Center (CTRC) of the University at Buffalo (UB); and a biosciences incubator and The Jacobs Institute of Neurology, both UB affiliates.

The six-story Academic Health Sciences Centre embraces multidisciplinary, highly technical research, while supporting Saskatchewan's commitment to provide exceptional healthcare for the people of the province. Flad Architects collaborated with Henry Downing Howlett Architects to design the new D Wing, which houses research labs, animal facilities, and academic offices for biomedical and pharmaceutical researchers from the various Health Sciences Colleges and units at the University of Saskatchewan.

New technologies and approaches are making the renovation of academic science facilities a more financially attractive option for institutions facing limited budgets, constrained real estate, and aging buildings with prominent historic legacies. Recent data suggests that, depending on the type of technology applied, institutions can achieve significant savings by renovating existing buildings to meet the needs of modern science as opposed to demolishing and building new.

The Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research is a pioneering research facility that brings together biologists working to understand the disease at a molecular level and engineering faculty devoted to solving problems related to cancer. The ultimate goal is to accelerate the discovery of cures for cancer.

Driven by a spirit of collaboration, Kaleida Health and the University at Buffalo united within a single structure to bring several disciplines—and patients, surgeons, and researchers—together to exchange knowledge and ignite innovation. The 476,000-sf facility achieves this by stacking a translational research building over a clinical vascular institute. The first floors of this 10-story "vertical campus" house the Gates Vascular Institute (GVI), with the Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) occupying the top half of the building.

The Blood Research Institute, with eight core laboratories serving 21 investigator-level scientists, is a state-of-the-art research facility located on the campus of the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center, along with the Medical College of Wisconsin, Froedtert Hospital, and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.