Engineering

The University of Maine opened the $78 million Ferland Engineering Education and Design Center in August of 2022 in Orono. Designed by Ellenzweig and WBRC to promote experiential learning, the 115,000-sf facility features hands-on teaching labs for programs in mechanical and biomedical engineering. Housing the campus welcome center and a STEM outreach hub, the three-story structure provides capstone project rooms, a collaboration commons, informal meeting areas, conference rooms, and offices for faculty and staff.

Florida Polytechnic University opened the $47 million Applied Research Center in August of 2022 in Lakeland. Designed by HOK, the 90,000-sf facility provides teaching and research labs, student design spaces, conference rooms, faculty offices, and administrative space. Catalyzing entrepreneurship and economic development, the two-story structure will play a pivotal role in expanding academic program offerings and resources to support the university’s growing student population.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)’s new Unity Hall is an academic research building focused on computational-based technologies for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), including robotics, data science, bioinformatics, and computational biology. The five-story, 100,000-sf facility brings together previously dispersed programs to create a centralized location for the university’s Smart World research cluster. In addition to dedicated labs, offices, and meeting spaces, Unity Hall houses shared dry lab and support spaces designed to foster the advanced multidisciplinary collaboration that is the hallmark of 4IR technologies. 

The University of Washington will break ground in fall of 2022 on the $102 million Interdisciplinary Engineering Building in Seattle. Designed by KieranTimberlake and McGranahan Architects, the 70,000-sf facility will act as the academic home for all undergraduate engineering students on campus.

Cornell University will begin construction in January of 2023 on a 30,000-nsf expansion of Thurston Hall in Ithaca, N.Y. Designed by NBBJ to promote experiential learning, the $40 million project will accommodate the rapidly growing Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The façade of the brick and stone structure, which was originally built in 1951, will be transformed into a contemporary glass and metal exterior that transmits natural light to interior areas.

Cardiff University opened the £80 million Translational Research Hub in July of 2022 in the United Kingdom. Housing the Institute for Compound Semiconductors and the Cardiff Catalysis Institute, the 129,000-sf facility provides specialized labs, collaboration spaces, and offices where scientists can work side-by-side with industrial partners to create new technological solutions for pressing challenges in manufacturing, energy, transportation, and healthcare.

NASA Glenn Research Center opened the Research Support Building in July of 2022 in Cleveland. Designed by TEN Arquitectos and ASA as a vibrant nexus of interaction and innovation, the two-story, 64,000-sf facility provides collaborative engineering suites, open and private offices, conference rooms, and training areas. Accommodating approximately 164 employees, the flexible and inclusive development features a communal dining area as well as a 6,000-sf outdoor commons.

Iowa State University is planning to construct the $54 million Therkildsen Industrial Engineering Building in Ames. Designed by The S/L/A/M Collaborative, the 77,000-gsf facility will provide 42,600 nsf of flexible teaching, research, and administrative space for the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering. The lower levels of the four-story structure will house classrooms, innovation studios, and a café, with labs strategically sited in highly visible locations to promote program opportunities and benefits.

San Francisco State University is building the $169 million Science & Engineering Innovation Center to provide leading-edge labs and classrooms for STEM education. Delivered by the design-build team of SmithGroup and DPR Construction, the 179,000-sf complex will comprise 125,000 sf of new construction and 54,000 sf of renovated space. The collaborative facility will feature three studio-style chemistry teaching venues with configurable workstations that will integrate lab and lecture functions in a single interactive setting.

Clark University broke ground in April of 2022 on the Center for Media Arts, Computing, and Design in Worcester, Mass. Designed by Ayers Saint Gross as a hub for interdisciplinary innovation, the two-wing structure will house the Department of Computer Science, the Becker School of Design & Technology, and some programs within the Department of Visual and Performing Arts.

UK Research & Innovation began construction in June of 2022 on the £93 million National Quantum Computing Centre in Harwell in the United Kingdom. Located on the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Campus in Oxfordshire, the 50,000-sf innovation hub will provide dry labs, collaboration spaces, meeting rooms, and offices where multidisciplinary teams will design, build, and operate quantum computers.

Missouri University of Science and Technology is constructing the $37 million Innovation Lab in Rolla. Enhancing the recruitment and retention of first-year students, the 50,000-sf facility will feature maker spaces, idea labs, active-learning classrooms, and specialized environments for augmented and virtual reality technologies. The highly transparent structure will offer collaboration venues of various sizes to promote experiential education and entrepreneurship.

Caltech broke ground in May of 2022 on the $100 million Resnick Sustainability Center in Pasadena, Calif. Designed by the Yazdani Studio of CannonDesign, the 79,500-sf building will house interdisciplinary laboratories that will be accessible to investigators and innovators from across the Caltech community. The collaborative three-story structure will initially accommodate four research hubs:

George Mason University broke ground in May of 2022 on the $84 million Life Sciences and Engineering Building in Manassas, Va. Located on the Science and Technology Campus in Prince William County, the 133,000-gsf facility will accommodate STEM-H programs in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health sciences.

The University of California San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering just opened Franklin Antonio Hall, a 187,000-gsf LEED platinum building that contains 13 collaborative laboratories, two 100-seat active learning classrooms, faculty offices, a 250-seat learning innovation studio, and a 2,000-gsf café. The “collaboratory” concept informs tenant selection, group adjacency planning, and space customization processes, with an eye toward fostering collaboration between different fields of research and industry partners. Cross-discipline, faculty-led research groups will share collaboratory spaces and focus on real-world issues, such as renewable energy technologies, smart cities and smart transportation, wearable and robotics innovations, real-time data analysis and decision making, digital privacy and security, nanotechnology, and precision medicine. The building design and construction process was also highly collaborative, utilizing an integrated CM/GC approach that brought together all players to form a cohesive team.