Higher Education

The University of South Florida broke ground on the $50 million USF Health Heart Institute in Tampa in December of 2013. The five-story, 100,000-sf facility will feature four core laboratories for basic and applied research, including regenerative medicine; pharmacology and drug discovery; bioinformatics and genomics; and integrative cell and organ physiology. The interdisciplinary project is created in partnership with Florida Hospital Pepin Heart Institute and is slated for completion in 2015.

Construction will begin in early 2014 on the $50 million Water Campus in Baton Rouge, La. The 30-acre development will provide research, engineering, and administrative facilities for government agencies, academic institutions, and industry partners. The first phase of construction will feature Louisianna State University's 50,000-sf River Modeling Center which will include a small scale representation of the lower Mississippi River.

Vanderbilt University is planning a four-story, 160,000-sf expansion of Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital in Nashville. The $84 million tower will provide one inpatient care floor, including a 36-bed pediatric ICU, and three floors of shell space. Construction will begin in 2015.
 

Auburn University began building the $20 million Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) in December of 2013. Located in the Auburn Research Park, the 90,400-sf facility will provide classrooms, laboratories, small group interaction areas, and a technology center. The general contractor for the project is Brasfield & Gorrie. Completion is expected by summer of 2015.

Located on the southern end of the Kaiser Permanente Fontana medical campus, the new 490,000-sf, seven-story teaching hospital and inpatient tower replaces an existing main hospital, some of which will be converted for outpatient use. With more than 500 physicians and 4,400 support staff serving more than 440,000 members, the 314-private-bed hospital includes a 28-private-bed neonatal intensive care unit and a 51-room emergency department.

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston is designing a $42 million research facility to replace a building damaged by Hurricane Ike in 2008. The six-story, 93,000-sf project will provide laboratories, research support space, and mechanical areas. Construction is expected to begin by March of 2015 with completion following in summer of 2017.

Colby College is building the $18.6 million Davis Science Center in Waterville, Maine. Providing classrooms, computer labs, faculty offices, and research space, the 36,400-sf facility will house the departments of mathematics and statistics, computer science, and psychology. LEED sustainable design certification will be sought for the center, which will feature a robotics laboratory and a behavioral neuroscience research suite. Completion is expected in fall of 2014.

The University of Canterbury will begin construction in mid-2014 on the $212 million Regional Science and Innovation Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand. Providing technology-rich classrooms and laboratories to support progressive science pedagogies, the facility will accommodate a variety of learning modalities including small laboratory discovery groups, online instruction, and face-to-face teaching.

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.

The University of North Texas has partnered with Ramtech Building Systems on a modular construction project in Denton. The three-building installation provides 38,000 sf of instructional space, conference rooms, and faculty and administrative offices. Designed to showcase the speed and versatility of moveable modular construction, the $3.5 million project has enabled the relocation of key programs as part of the new $130 million University Union project.

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.

The University of Texas at Tyler will begin construction in spring of 2014 on the Ben and Maytee Fisch College of Pharmacy. The design team for the 60,000-sf facility includes SmithGroup JJR and Eubanks Harris Roberts Craig Architects. The project is funded in part by a $22 million donation. The University of Texas at Tyler is also planning to begin construction in 2014 on a $4 million addition to the Fine and Performing Arts Center as well as a new alumni house.

The University of North Carolina Wilmington dedicated the $30 million Marine Biotechnology Center of North Carolina (MARBIONC) in November of 2013. The 69,000-sf facility provides laboratories, offices, and conference rooms to support marine biotechnology research and development. Focus areas will include drug discovery based on compounds from marine organisms; detection technologies for both human-origin marine pollutants and biotoxins from microorganisms; algae farming for biofuels, and mariculture (marine aquaculture).

A comprehensive renovation of Harvard University’s 105,000-sf Sherman Fairchild Building for the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Department has allowed researchers to work more efficiently and collaboratively than ever before, with shared fume hoods and environmental, imaging, and equipment rooms. High-use support spaces, such as tissue culture rooms, were moved to the building exterior to take advantage of natural light, while the other shared spaces were moved to the interior.