Latest Reports

A new master space plan for the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Natural Sciences leverages program adjacencies and shared infrastructure to improve collaborative interdisciplinary research while maximizing space use. This “soft growth” renovation approach allows the college to increase capacity and improve efficiency without demolishing or adding new buildings.

Lorain County Community College’s new 53,000-gsf Laboratory Sciences Building houses facilities for the departments of biology, chemistry, and physics, with 24-person teaching labs and lab support rooms, a student commons, break-out space designed to serve as open study space, and a rooftop teaching greenhouse.

Paying a premium for the flexibility to remain truly generic can be both expensive and counterproductive to lab design goals, say the designers of the Wisconsin Institutes of Medical Research (WIMR) multi-phase project at the University of Wisconsin (UW). Instead, they increased space efficiency and density by walking a fine line between custom and generic lab design, with a modular framework that met certain parameters but could be adapted to the science conducted within the spaces.

A total systems approach to space management is allowing the University of Michigan Medical School to make better-informed and more objective decisions in planning for growth within 4 million gsf of existing facilities in Ann Arbor, Mich. The space management system—which continues to evolve and expand since its deployment in 2008, and recently became a University best practice—increased annual space productivity by 4.18 percent and generates an estimated yearly savings of $300,000 through improved operational efficiencies.

Achieving the goal of near net-zero energy consumption in research facilities over the next decade and beyond will be more challenging than efforts that so far have resulted in a 40 percent energy reduction for many. Getting to 80 percent savings can put them in range, and the best way to tackle this final, achievable savings is by addressing energy and water consumption together using new technologies like more efficient lab equipment and better data center cooling systems, according to Steve Frei and Paul Erickson, principals at Affiliated Engineers, Inc.