Latest Reports

As interdisciplinary team research and translational medicine become increasingly critical to advancing medical treatment of complex diseases, information itself—the visualization, shared storage, analysis, and harnessing of data—is becoming the most important driver in scientific research. The resulting shift to a higher ratio of dry (computational) space versus wet labs is forcing building designers to examine new ways to foster an open, collaborative culture while accommodating computational science needs.

The Sterling Chemistry Laboratory (SCL), located on Yale University’s Science Hill, is an iconic 157,800-gsf, three-story chemistry lab building designed by Delano & Aldrich and completed in 1923. The building structure of steel, reinforced concrete, and masonry, with a brick and brownstone exterior skin, remains intact, while the interior has been renovated to modernize the laboratory facilities and add 31,600 sf of space. The u-shaped building perimeter consists of a two-story head house at the south and three-story structures along the east and west. The primary focus of the SCL project is to provide cutting-edge teaching labs and associated support spaces within the footprint of the existing historic building, provide a much-needed roof replacement across the entire center area in the north and south, and provide a new HVAC system to support the science programs.

As part of a master planning initiative, the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia used survey tools to examine how faculty, staff, and students collaborate; how they use the campus; and how University facilities compare to other institutions. More challenging was finding a way to express qualitative data in a quantitative way, and share this data with campus leadership to inform planning and design decisions.

Maker spaces, specifically designed to serve the needs of learners and best take advantage of local resources, are surpassing classrooms as the most effective way to educate science and engineering students. Students need access to a variety of equipment, technology, and spaces, from 3D and large format printers to sewing machines and electronic tables, from collaboration zones to woodworking areas.

A dynamic, forward-looking partnership between the University of Michigan Medical School and the A. Alfred Taubman Health Sciences Library has transformed a relatively hidden, introverted, and utilitarian 1970s book repository into a vibrant 21st century learning hub. But the original goal of this $55 million renovation project was much more modest than a whole-building transformation: It was simply to improve the medical student lounge, a windowless basement space that with each passing year had become less inviting to prospective and current students, as other medical schools improved their student-life spaces.