Higher Education

Duke University's $115-million French Science Center is slated for completion in December 2006. Named for donor Melinda French Gates, the facility bring various arts and sciences under one roof with teaching and research laboratories for biological chemistry, genomics, materials science, physical biology, nanoscience, and bioinformatics. The facility will also house the departments of biology, chemistry, anatomy, anthropology, physics, mathematics, and six research greenhouses.

The University of Georgia's College of Veterinary Medicine opened its $63-million Animal Health Research Center in early summer of 2006. Dedicated to the study of the treatment and prevention of emerging infectious diseases of zoonotic origin, the three-story, 75,00-sf BSL-3AG facility accommodates biocontainment spaces for the study of agents requiring BSL-1 to BSL-3 facilities.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) will begin construction in summer of 2009 on a $132-million arts and humanities facility. Funded by the state, the 220,000-sf building will include a 425-seat concert hall, a 300-seat theater and a smaller theater, a recital hall, a dance studio, and classrooms. The facility will be sited on a hillside adjacent to the existing fine arts building and will house UMBC's English, ancient studies, music, dance, and philosophy departments.

Utah State University is constructing the $13-million David G. Sant Engineering Innovation Building on its Logan campus. The three-story, 34,000-sf facility is 135 feet long by 84 feet wide and will house laboratories of various sizes with modular, flexible bays.

The University of California, San Diego completed the $17-million expansion and renovation of the Biomedical Library on its La Jolla, Calif., campus in late spring of 2006. McCarthy Building Companies served as construction manager and general contractor for the project, which entailed the addition of 43,454 sf of space to the existing 32,950-sf library, as well as renovation of the existing structure. Los Angeles-based Pfeiffer Partners was the architect.

The University of Puerto Rico (UPR) at Mayaguez has plans to break ground in summer 2006 on the $15-million Bioprocess Institute, which will provide both capacity for  monoclonal bioprocess research as well as perform pilot-scale production. At UPR's Rio Piedras campus, the $85-million, 150,000-sf Molecular Sciences Complex will break ground later in 2006.

Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) is nearing completion of construction on it's new $145.4-million Center for Health and Healing. The 400,000-sf, mixed-use facility is engineered for a LEED Platinum rating.  OHSU expects to save $700,000 annually in energy and operating costs thanks to the building's "green" features.

Johns Hopkins University has plans to house The Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences (IBBS) in the John G. Rangos Sr. Building, the first building to be built at the new life sciences Science + Technology Park at Johns Hopkins, which broke ground April 17, 2006. The Park is an $800-million development directed by East Baltimore Development Inc. that will include housing, retail, and other businesses and services.

Wake Forest University has dedicated its new $72-million Biotechnology Research Facility 1 (BRF1), the sixth building at the Piedmont Triad Research Park which is located on 240 acres in downtown Winston-Salem, N.C. The University's Institute for Regenerative Medicine along with the Lipid Sciences Research Group will both be housed in offices and labs in the five-story, 187,000-sf structure, which commenced construction a little over two years ago. Architect for the project was O'Brien Atkins; Shelco Inc. was the builder.

Florida Gulf Coast University has selected Kraft Construction of Naples, Fl., to build the U.A. Whittaker School of Engineering. Groundbreaking for the three-story facility is scheduled for fall 2006. It will provide 50,000- to 70,000 sf of space for offices, lab space, and classrooms. Construction of the $15-million building should begin in early 2007 with completion in 2008.

The City of Buffalo dedicated the $131-million Buffalo Life Sciences Complex on June 2, 2006. Designed by Francis Cauffman Foley Hoffmann Architects, the 290,000-sf complex consists of two adjoined four- and five-story buildings built on the edge of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham is initiating the second phase of its Richard C. and Annette N. Shelby Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building project. Phase two will cost approximately $120 million and will add 30,000-sf of research space, including the $7.89-million fit-out of the sixth and eleventh floors to house immunological and neuroscientific research, including the expansion of the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute. The contractor is Argo Construction.

The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) broke ground in April 2006 on the Helen Diller Family Cancer Research Building, a five-story, 160,000-sf facility designed by Rafael Vinoly. The building will more than double the space for UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers to focus on a variety of cancers including prostate, kidney,and brain. The UCSF Cancer Research Institute will be housed in the new facility, where research on the basic biological mechanisms of cancer will be carried out in 15 major laboratories.

Wake Forest University and industry partners celebrated the grand opening of the 189,000-sf Biotechnology Research Facility 1 in Winston-Salem's Piedmont Triad Research Park in May of 2006. The five-story, $60-million facility will house space for private companies and academic space for Wake Forest Health Sciences' Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Lipid Sciences program.   

The state of Florida now has designs for a prototype science buildling, thanks to a joint effort by Palm Beach Community College (PBCC) and three other colleges. The design is expected to save millions of dollars in architectural fees. PBCC will implement the design in its plans for a new 81,000-sf BioScience Technology Complex, which broke ground in April 2006.