While the global pandemic changed many fundamental elements of daily life—including travel, education, and the economy—its impact on the workplace will perhaps prove to be the most disruptive and long-lasting. Research conducted by MillerKnoll reveals how years of remote working, empty real estate, workforce redistribution, and limited social interaction have profoundly changed workplace expectations and organizational strategies for employees and employers alike. The research study, called The Case for a Thriving Workplace, indicates a massive shift in future planning approaches to workspace design and organizational structure that are more human, holistic, interactive, and flexible.

Stony Brook University’s Renaissance School of Medicine in Stony Brook, N.Y., has increased its capacity for ultra-low-temperature freezer storage, a need that became critical nationwide in early 2021 when the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine required that level of storage, limiting which hospitals and pharmacies could offer it. Stony Brook’s new 560,000-sf Medical and Research Translation facility contains a low-temp walk-in (LTW) Freezer Farm suite with eight minus-80-degree-Celsius permanent storage chambers and a minus-20-degree-Celsius storage corridor with a combined capacity of over 1.8 million samples. This is the equivalent storage of 80 traditional point-of-use (POU) stand-alone freezer units.

The Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (BBH), a newly opened life science incubator in Woo Hon Fai Hall on the University of California Berkeley campus, sets a new standard for adaptive reuse of historically significant buildings. Originally completed in 1970, the 94,000-sf cast-in-place concrete building was designed by famed San Francisco architect Mario Ciampi as the home of the Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive. Considered an iconic example of mid-century brutalist architecture, the building was found to have significant seismic vulnerabilities after a campus-wide assessment was conducted in 1997. Despite installing temporary reinforcement bracing that improved the building’s seismic rating from “very poor” to “poor,” the museum ultimately moved to a new location in 2014, leaving the massive complex vacant until a decision was made in 2018 to transform it into a life science research incubator that also preserved the building’s historic legacy. While the bold adaptive reuse goal was laudable and widely supported, the architectural engineering and mechanical challenges of retrofitting the historic building to support the needs of a modern flexible life sciences lab were unprecedented.

While creating generic/flexible lab spaces that can be adapted to a variety of different research needs continues to be the preferred approach—especially in higher education buildings—there is also a growing need for highly specialized lab and support facilities designed for very specific types of research. As a result, facility designers are increasingly tasked with balancing the demand for both open generic/flexible labs and specialized lab spaces in a single building with the added challenge of improving energy efficiency, sustainability, and operating costs.

The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is using data science to improve existing space efficiencies while fulfilling departmental growth and retention goals, reducing leased space, and fueling master planning efforts. Data analytics has become a fundamental tool since facilities staff undertook an extensive data collection and analysis project and applied what they learned to develop space assignment rules and processes.

2021 was another unprecedented year, with rapidly changing capital project priorities. New directions in science funding, the current and future realities of in-person and hybrid learning and work environments, and what it now takes to recruit and retain workers, students, and faculty were items of highest interest. Here is the top ten list of Tradeline articles that your peers found particularly helpful in navigating 2021 and preparing for 2022 and beyond.

An aggressive workplace transformation to an open floorplate with no private offices, implemented across 1 million-plus sf in three locations, allowed Unum Group to consolidate about 40 percent of its worldwide real estate portfolio, turning the vacated space into $53 million in sub-leasing revenue over the next 10 years. Despite the consolidation, the refurbished office buildings are equipped with a raft of appealing amenities, from coffee bars, micromarkets, and cafeterias to fitness centers, quiet rooms, and gaming areas.

Faculty in higher education often spend less than 20 percent of their workday at their assigned desks, so why do they still have them? It is a question that academic administrators are asking, as they look for ways to provide building occupants with the spaces they need to do their work and the autonomy to select the right space for the right task, all within an increasingly constrained campus footprint. Corporate offices have been making the transition to unassigned seating for years now, and despite trepidation, there are signs that academia may be following suit: In a recent survey of 88 U.S. colleges and universities (conducted by the Society for College and University Planning and brightspot, a Buro Happold company), about 62 percent of respondents said they are pursuing more flexible or unassigned workspaces for administrative staff, and 54 percent are planning to do so for academic work facilities, as well.