Higher Education

Sul Ross State University has selected the San Antonio office of Corpus-Christ-based Braselton Construction Co. as the general contractor for a $13 million science renovation and addition project. The laboratories of the Warnock Science building will be completely renovated, including upgrades to the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems. A 11,000-sf, three-story addition to the Warnock facility will house two 80-seat lecture halls and a 60-seat planetarium/lecture hall.

Emerson College will break ground on its new 185,000-sf dormitory in early 2004. Sited in midtown Boston, the 600-bed project dubbed "Piano Row" will facilitate completion of the college's relocation from its previous Back Bay location. Designed by Stubbins Associates of Cambridge, the building will stand 14 stories above ground with three underground stories including a tournament-regulation basketball court. Completion is expected by fall of 2006.

The Community School of Music and Arts is nearing completion of its $1.6 million, 25,000-sf campus in Mountain View. The two-story facility, which houses classrooms, a concert hall and practice rooms, includes significant architectural accommodations for state-of-the-art acoustics. The public grand opening of the campus is scheduled for March 18, 2004.

Poway Unified School District has selected Douglas E. Barnhart, Inc. to build the $23 million Oak Valley Middle School. Designed by NTD Architects of San Diego, the 106,000-sf school will be comprised of five classroom buildings, administrative offices, a gymnasium, a multipurpose room, and outdoor sport facilities. Construction will begin in January 2004 and reach completion in May of 2005.

The University of Texas is planning its new $22-million Department of Biomedical Engineering facility on its main Austin campus. The four-story, 80,000-sf facility will provide classroom and research space for three areas of biomedical engineering: imaging, computing, and molecular and cellular bioengineering. Office and classroom space will occupy 40,000 sf;  laboratories will occupy the remaining 40,000-sf. The research facilities will house dry labs for computer and instrumentation studies as well as wet lab space. Occupancy is expected in 2005.

Ground was broken on October 10, 2003 on Charleston Southern University’s new $11.3 million science building, an undergraduate teaching and multi-disciplinary research laboratory facility. The two-story, 54,000-sf building is scheduled for occupancy in January 2005. Lord, Aeck & Sargent of Atlanta is the project architect and programmer. The firm has also been commissioned to renovate CSU’s Jones/Ashby Hall, which currently houses biology and chemistry labs.

Austin Community College (ACC) dedicated its new $19 million Health Science Building on October 4, 2003. Sited on the college's Eastview campus, the 82,000-sf facility houses a dental hygiene clinic, teaching space for the dental technology program, a nursing laboratory, and classrooms. The $11 million second expansion phase will comprise 60,000 sf and is slated for completion by year-end 2004, enabling the consolidation of the entire ACC Health Science program at the Eastview campus.

San Jose State University has opened its newly updated Microelectronics Process Engineering Fabrication Facility at the College of Engineering. The 3,400-sf fab and academic program were made possible by donations from corporate sponsors including Intel Corp. and Applied Materials Inc., as well as funding from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and the National Science Foundation.

M+W Zander was presented with a Distinguished Building Award at AIA Chicago’s Designight on September 19, 2003 in recognition of the firm’s design for the New Administration Building and Underground Parking Facility for McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. The 42,000-gsf building and 60,000-gsf parking garage complex was completed in May 2003, for which M+W Zander provided master site planning, programming, architectural design, and construction administration services.

The Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University recently celebrated the “topping off” of its newest educational and research facility, the Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine, and Applied Sciences (CIEMAS). The state-of-the-art facility features undergraduate teaching and project labs, research facilities and a variety of spaces where faculty and students can both formally meet and informally interact. Zimmer Gunsul Frasca designed the building, and Skanska USA Building is serving as manager of construction.

The University of Pittsburgh is developing a regional biocontainment laboratory with $18-million in funding from the National Institutes of Heath’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The laboratory, one of nine regional biocontainment labs funded by NIH, will be sited in the Biomedical Science Tower 3 in Oakland, Pa. Additionally, a bioterrorism research center established by Johns Hopkins University will move most of its operations to Oakland in fall of 2003 to become the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston is creating one of the first national biocontainment laboratories with a $120 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The University will contribute the remaining $40 million to build the $160-million, 170,000-sf project. The laboratory will house flexible, high-level biocontainment facilities, clinical facilities, and research support space.

The University of Tennessee Health Science Center will build a Regional Biocontainment Laboratory in Memphis, Tenn. Funded by $5 million from the University and a $14 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, the facility will accommodate research on bioterrorism and biotechnology and will be located adjacent to UT’s existing vivarium.

The Strategic Partnership for Research in Nanotechnology has been granted $10 million in funding from the Senate to establish a network of nanotechnology research centers. The Strategic Partnership for Research in Nanotechnology is a consortium comprised of The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Texas at Arlington, The University of Texas at Austin, and Rice University.

Harvard Medical School (HMS) has completed the New Research Building (NRB) at its Cambridge, Mass., campus. Designed by ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge, the 525,000-sf building is the largest expansion of the medical campus in nearly a century. The NRB houses approximately 800 researchers and staff from various disciplines that will work to pursue treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases.