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The life sciences industry has become the great hope in real estate, as we face the most significant public health crisis in a century. While other industries have slowed and suffered as a result of sheltering in place and working from home, science facilities have remained operational and even have thrived in prime markets, as the industry continues to search for medical breakthroughs. The downturn in other industries has left buildings vacant. The life science market, on the other hand, continues to experience some of the lowest vacancy and highest employment rates. For life science organizations in the prime U.S. markets, there simply remains a shortage of available research-capable space. Enter the big pivot to science.

Efforts to make mass timber construction a viable alternative to concrete and steel took a giant step forward last year when Walmart announced that the 2.4 million sf of office buildings on its new Bentonville, Ark., headquarters campus would use a structural system of cross-laminated timber manufactured from regionally harvested southern yellow pine. It’s not just in the office environment where wood is becoming a contender. “We see increasing interest in using mass timber structures for research/lab buildings, especially at universities that are in major timber-producing regions,” says John Starr, a principal at Lord Aeck Sargent, a Katerra Company (LAS). Starr cited facilities at Georgia Tech, Oregon State, and Michigan State as examples.

The unprecedented health and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is driving many institutions to increase investment in new biocontainment facilities or rapidly pivot to upgrade and repurpose existing containment spaces in an urgent attempt to respond to the crisis. Hundreds of organizations nationwide began applying for grants after the National Institutes for Health (NIH) received $3.6 billion in funding dedicated to COVID-19 research as part of an emergency stimulus bill passed earlier this year. The NIH now has until 2024 to release the funds. Additionally, private donors, non-governmental organizations, and other entities worldwide are providing billions in funding for development of testing and vaccine programs. This surge of financing is expected to fuel a growth in the creation of new biocontainment spaces in the near future and long term. Since designing, building, and commissioning new biocontainment labs is an expensive and time-consuming process, some institutions are electing to upgrade existing BSL-2 facilities to make them BSL-3, while others are choosing to move existing research programs to make room for new pandemic-related initiatives.

Reflecting the pedagogical shift to student-led inquiry and collaborative learning, the Community Learning Center (CLC) is emerging as an important tool for student success. Results from in-depth studies at three Texas public universities with recently launched residence hall CLCs indicate that the new spaces have had a positive impact on student success, well-being, and retention.

Employees are driving the design of their workspaces like never before—demanding more collaborative environments, flexible spaces, and personalized technology. As a result, the focus of workplace design and operations, and overall facilities management, is evolving “from the responsibility of managing the building to the opportunity to enable the people within that building,” says Melissa Marsh, AIA, founder and executive director of PLASTARC. Marsh points to the rise of coworking as the disruptive innovation that sparked this shift, and the purposeful use of technology as the force that will sustain it.