Latest Reports

Leading-edge interdisciplinary facilities like the New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition and Health (IFNH) at Rutgers University, as well as facilities in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., are transforming academic research culture through the use of open building designs that foster cross-discipline collaborations and “emergent outcomes.” This approach to culture-driven facility design is also being successfully deployed at other universities across the country in an effort to improve the way research institutes operate and compete for grants and contracts.  

Tufts Institute for Innovation (TII), a health sciences research institute, strives to revolutionize scientific inquiry with a new model for research that will reimagine laboratory practice and accelerate human health breakthroughs. Inside the labs, researchers share space and equipment in an open, collaborative, team-like environment that exemplifies the TII mission, while also generating cost efficiency.

A hands-on, interactive, and problem-oriented approach to learning is taking campus planning and design by storm, focused on equipping students with the skills they need to tackle near-term and future challenges globally. Increasingly, universities are recognizing students’ desire to connect their educational experience with real-world applications, and “maker spaces” provide that intersection. They also appeal to big industry and help to connect students with job opportunities, particularly in STEM fields.

The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) is designing new facilities to respond to the experiential, project team-based learning paradigms set forth in today’s cross-disciplinary agenda for science, technology, engineering, and math. With one new construction and a renovation project underway, TCNJ hopes to reap the same benefits realized at other institutions, which experienced increased applicants, enrollment, and STEM majors, as well as more effective pedagogies and greater research output.

Space allocation can be a political minefield, but Stony Brook University School of Medicine (SBM) is changing that paradigm. Old-style backroom negotiations are being replaced with a wholly transparent decision-making approach that utilizes information technology to democratize space allocation and provide department chairs with an unprecedented wealth of information about their space and staffing, past, present, and future.