University of Arizona Constructs Research and Teaching Facilities

The University of Arizona expanded its Tucson campus with the completion of three new research and laboratory facilities in 2006. All three were designed by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership of Portland, Ore. The $46.1-million, 85,000-sf Chemistry Building will consolidate chemistry teaching and research programs and is slated for completion in late spring of 2006. The project construction manager is Hensel Phelps Construction Co. The $65.7-million Thomas W. Keating Bioresearch Building will be completed in spring of 2006. The 177,000-sf facility will house the Bio5 Institute, a collaboration of faculty, staff, and graduate students from the Colleges of Science; Agriculture; Life Sciences; Medicine; Pharmacy; and Engineering and Mines. Designed to foster interaction, the building will have laboratories on every floor, a 56,000-sf basement vivarium, and office space. The construction manager for the project is Gilbane Building Co. The $54.5-million, 135,000-sf Medical Research Building will accommodate translational research in the molecular basis of human health, disease, and aging. Slated for completion in early summer of 2006, the building will feature highly flexible interdisciplinary research labs in large open configurations, which will also exist in the Keating facility. The Medical Research Building will also house faculty offices, open-plan graduate workstations, conference rooms, and dedicated lab support space. The construction manger for the facility is Hensel Phelps. 

Additionally, the University of Arizona is designing the $40 million first phase of a new biomedical engineering research facility. that will house the departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, and some of the Biomedical Engineering graduate program.