Latest Reports

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.

As the landscape for academic institutions grows more competitive, determining how human factors impact the design of STEM facilities is becoming a significant consideration when it comes to attracting students and research faculty. As a result, team members at Francis Cauffman Architects are developing a set of metrics to identify and assess the value of design features that influence occupant experience in academic STEM spaces with the goal of creating an index that can be used to inform future renovation and new construction projects. Human factor points are allocated to spaces and design features that have a demonstrated positive impact on student enrollment, result in high levels of user satisfaction, and accommodate the teaching and research goals of the facility. In a post-COVID world, this additional evaluation tool may be more important than ever.

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the need for the research community to respond quickly to changing markets and to understand the value of laboratory spaces that are flexible, adaptable, and scalable. We’ve seen stadiums converted to makeshift hospitals, “drive-through” testing sites pop up in vacant parking lots, and testing laboratories continually ramp up production to expedite results. This quick-thinking behavior has been inspiring to witness but daunting to execute. Laboratories, by nature, are among the most complex building typologies, where the utmost importance is protecting both the health and safety of their occupants and the integrity of the research. The complexities of the resulting design can be challenging to undertake, but when faced with the extreme circumstances of a pandemic, it is possible to expedite the process with a combination of strategies.