Latest Reports

Since its opening in 2017, the University of Idaho’s 78,500-gsf Integrated Research and Innovation Center (IRIC) has attracted a cumulative total of $144 million in grant funding, roughly 20 percent of all the research dollars coming to the school. Among other signs of success, the $52 million, three-story structure has hosted 30 different research teams whose work has generated 35 Ph.Ds., 77 master’s degrees, and close to 900 publications. Offering wet and dry labs, offices, collaboration spaces, core research facilities, and event space, the building breaks away from the traditional research paradigm to focus on projects rather than faculty or departments. But the design and operation have presented some challenges in the first five years, including a wall of south-facing windows, concrete lab flooring, and a small loading dock.

Minimizing the risk of lab animal allergy (LAA) is an increasingly important design and operational consideration in animal research facilities, since LAA has been identified as one of the most significant occupational health risks for personnel working with laboratory animals and in the lab animal environment. Personnel exposure to allergens can be effectively reduced with facility design and engineering controls, including differential air pressures, directional air flow, HEPA filtration, automation, traffic patterns, separation of personnel space from animal space, as well as optimal use of personal protection equipment (PPE).

Considered one of the first and largest university-level makerspace programs in the country, the Bernard M. Gordon Learning Factory on Penn State University’s main campus in State College, Pa., has operated in its original building for more than 30 years with only minimal facility renovations. It will soon relocate to 103,000 sf in one of two new state-of-the-art academic engineering buildings under construction on the campus, a move that the Learning Factory program director says will help the program continue to compete with the growing number of makerspaces being established throughout the academic marketplace. The Learning Factory, which pairs students with more than 100 industry sponsors each year, is scheduled to begin prototyping several classes in the new facility in January 2023, with full occupancy targeted for that summer.

Among all the questions about the post-COVID workplace, a common realization is taking hold: Organizations must be especially mindful of employee needs in their return-to-office planning. The pandemic upended not just the professional but also the personal side of workers’ lives. One of the things that distinguishes this new era is the much larger role empathy and understanding will play in the design process, says John Campbell, president of the architecture firm FCA. The new workplace will feature a variety of recalibrated space types that are more purposeful, employee driven, and less unitized. 

The 14-story Heart Institute, completed in 2020 at the University of South Florida (USF), is the culmination of years of planning with an emphasis on integrating best practices from previous construction and renovation projects. The result is a “facilitative environment that provides for collaboration between researchers and research disciplines,” says Robert W. Engelman, associate vice president of research and innovation and professor of pediatrics, pathology, and cell biology at USF.