Vivarium

Purdue University is constructing the $160 million Nursing and Pharmacy Education Building in West Lafayette, Ind. Designed by Ayers Saint Gross and BSA LifeStructures, the 185,400-gsf facility will catalyze interprofessional synergies by collocating the School of Nursing and the Department of Pharmacy Practice in one dynamic center. This innovative hub for health science excellence will support a contemporary curriculum that equips future nurses and pharmacists with the essential competencies to deliver optimal patient care.

On Feb. 4, 2023, the temperature in Boston plunged to -9 F. Unbeknownst to the team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a rooftop access door at the Building for Transformative Medicine (BTM), which housed the facility’s vivarium, had been left unlocked. It was a costly oversight. Powerful winds forced the door open, exposing vital infrastructure to extreme cold. Sprinkler pipes froze, cracked, and ultimately burst when temperatures rose, unleashing a flood that cascaded through critical areas.

Brandywine Realty Trust has completed construction on 3151 Market Street, a dynamic innovation facility in the heart of Philadelphia’s life sciences cluster. Designed by Gensler, the 472,000-sf tower offers purpose-built offices and customizable laboratories with options for chemical and biological use, GMP production, and vivarium operations. Collaboration and knowledge exchange are enhanced by an advanced conference center and a café, complemented by private terraces and green spaces to amplify employee productivity.

Though universities may update master plans every five or 10 years, many find planning works best when it is continual and flexible to accommodate program and leadership changes. A number of projects at the University of North Texas Health Science Center (HSC) in Fort Worth demonstrate the need to assess existing spaces and develop plans for growth and flexibility, as well as the benefits of building long-term relationships with architects and other vendors.

The Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais) is constructing Orion, a BSL-4 laboratory complex in Campinas. Enabling the detection, study, and mitigation of pathogens and infectious disease agents, the USD185 million project will reinforce national sovereignty in response to current and future health crises and promote collaboration with the global scientific community.

The successful decarbonization of labs and other critical science environments to increase energy efficiency, occupant safety, and annual savings requires a goal-oriented project team with the cultural mindset to adopt effectual technology/engineering processes, procurement strategies, and incentive-based outcomes. Science and engineering facilities often encounter substantial obstacles, such as cost restraints, safety issues, restrictive regulations, and tight deadlines, when completing the massive energy transition necessary to decarbonize their labs. 

Barnard College is constructing the Roy & Diana Vagelos Science Center in New York to foster excellence in STEM education, innovation, and scholarship. Representing an investment of approximately $240 million, the expansion and renovation will transform the existing Altschul Hall into a modern hub for innovative teaching and research. The 169,000-sf structure will house all of Barnard’s bench sciences, including the departments of biology, chemistry, environmental science, neuroscience and behavior, and physics and astronomy. 

Ohio University began construction in January of 2025 on the $75 million Heritage Translational Research Center (HTRC) in Athens. Designed by Perkins&Will and DesignGroup, the 80,000-sf facility will consolidate laboratories and operations currently dispersed across campus, creating a collaborative ecosystem for clinical innovation. The four-story structure will provide bench space for translational biomedical research, as well as labs and support spaces for population health and clinical research.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) is building a $105 million health sciences building for the School of Pharmacy and the School of Nursing. Designed by Lamar Johnson Collaborative and Christner Architects, the 176,000-sf facility will offer teaching and research labs, a vivarium, and modern classrooms and study areas. As well as administrative offices, the three-story structure will accommodate programs in pharmacogenomics, synthetic chemistry, biochemistry, and microbiology.

Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed), home to North America’s largest baboon population dedicated to research, has opened a new primate research facility focused on animal welfare, human safety, and operational efficiency as guiding principles. The new Animal Care Complex (ACC) includes three modular breeding and holding facilities, each with a capacity of up to 300 animals of multiple species. The spacious facility has five indoor rooms which range from 400 to 800 sf, and outdoor yards as big as 5,500 sf. 

Missouri University of Science and Technology is planning to construct the Bioplex, a $130 million facility for advanced research and education in life sciences, biomedicine, and biomedical engineering. ZGF Architects is partnering with Christner Architects to design the 128,000-gsf structure, which represents the final phase of the Havener Arrival Complex. The multidisciplinary building will provide lab environments for 24 research teams, including wet bench labs and associated support spaces, as well as an ABSL-2 vivarium.

The vision of biomedical research as a collective effort is resoundingly clear in the $237.5 million Pelotonia Research Center, the first building to be completed in the 350-plus-acre Carmenton district on the campus of The Ohio State University (Ohio State) in Columbus. Opened in May 2023, the center integrates almost 100,000 sf of wet labs, 25,000 sf of computational labs, and 20,000 sf of core labs in a single facility designed to host interdisciplinary collaborations and public-private initiatives that focus on solving some of the most critical health challenges. With life science as the backbone of the research endeavor, current projects range from modeling cancer progressions to 3D printing of patient-specific anatomic models. 

Allentown, a premier provider of animal housing solutions, is partnering with The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) to launch a revolutionary home-cage mouse monitoring system powered by AI and machine learning (ML). This strategic collaboration is designed to accelerate preclinical research and improve the translatability of preclinical readouts to clinical applications.

The Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the University of Texas Health in San Antonio illustrates the pivotal role location plays in enhancing the success of an internationally recognized research program. The Institute previously occupied two buildings at a research park 23 miles from the university’s main campus. University administrators wanted to collocate all research on the same campus to promote multidisciplinary collaboration and interaction, with proximity to all clinical research activities, and to promote efficiency and the shared use of resources. 

The decreasing amount of time researchers spend in their labs is changing research facility design and space allocation, with an increased need for lab support space, a more significant reliance on core facilities, the creation of additional write-up and data analysis environments, and the purposeful inclusion of collaboration spaces.