Strategic Plans

Rice University opened the Rice Nexus in February of 2025 in Houston's Midtown neighborhood. Spanning 10,000 sf across two floors, the university’s flagship innovation hub is based in the Ion building to drive entrepreneurship and commercialization in association with industry partners. Tramonte Design Studio's vision for the Rice Nexus created labs for advanced tech development and free office space for early-stage startups, as well as showcasing faculty and student inventions.

Sutter Health will establish a 12-acre medical campus in Emeryville as part of a $1 billion investment to enhance the delivery of integrated care throughout the East Bay region. The 1.3 million-sf project includes the adaptive reuse of BioMed Realty’s Emery Yards development to create a 530,000-sf outpatient complex spanning two existing structures.

Broward Health is planning to construct two state-of-the-art medical office buildings, one in Fort Lauderdale and one in Deerfield Beach. Designed by The Beck Group and DMZ Architects, the project will enable Broward to expand their network of physicians and services, and streamline the delivery of accessible, high-quality care in southern Florida. The Fort Lauderdale facility will span 188,000 sf over eight floors, initially offering 129 exam rooms with the capacity for up to 237.

The University of South Carolina is planning to begin construction in 2025 on the School of Medicine Columbia. Serving as the centerpiece of a $300 million campus, the 300,000-sf facility will feature active learning classrooms, extensive medical simulation spaces, interdisciplinary laboratories, and a health science library. An adjoining biomedical research wing will advance the creation of novel therapies and treatments, with a central landscaped courtyard offering settings for informal exchange.

The fast-moving nature of biotechnology innovation means architects and designers for Regeneron have to plan for researchers’ requirements to change by the time new laboratories open on the Tarrytown, N.Y., campus. The campus is undergoing a $1.8 billion expansion, adding 900,000 sf of new laboratory and office space, along with additional parking, amenities, and infrastructure to support research and development.

Inova Health Center–Oakville opened in October of 2024 in the Potomac Yard neighborhood of Alexandria, Va. Designed by Ballinger and Ennead Architects, the 100,000-gsf facility represents the first phase of a regional initiative aimed at establishing unified clinical standards and operational flows across the system. Key rooms and spaces are consistent in multiple locations to increase efficiency and safety, resulting in improved patient care and outcomes.

The Kraft Group is planning to construct a stadium in the greater Boston area for the New England Revolution, a professional Major League Soccer club. Located in Everett, the project will transform a 43-acre brownfield site with a shuttered power plant into a vibrant destination for Revs fans and the entire community. The iconic structure will feature a cantilevered roof that overhangs the pedestrian streetscape, complemented by a four-acre public park with a waterfront promenade.

Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Boston Medical Center (BMC) have initiated a strategic research collaboration to decarbonize the value chain throughout the healthcare ecosystem. One of the most difficult environmental challenges facing the industry today is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions released from the disposal of regulated medical waste, including pharmaceutical packaging and single-use plastics. A key objective of this analysis is to effectively identify, pilot, and share decarbonization solutions that other healthcare organizations can adopt.

When Wayne State University in Detroit released its campus plan—the Wayne Framework—in 2018, no one could have guessed how prophetic the school’s new approach would turn out to be. Rather than creating a campus plan that sets a specific schedule of chronological tasks and building projects, the Wayne Framework instead focuses on how the school should evaluate priorities on an ongoing basis, allowing the facilities department to remain flexible enough to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. Within a few years of launching the Framework, those circumstances would include a global pandemic, catastrophic flooding, and numerous university leadership changes.

JLL’s Global Future of Work survey has explored the evolving world of corporate real estate since 2011. This year, it analyzes the key priorities, challenges, and strategies of more than 2,300 professionals and decision-makers from around the wold. Recent insights show that companies are adopting a cautiously positive outlook in this increasingly dynamic and ambiguous environment. With plans to increase and rebalance organizational headcount in the coming years, many are ready to invest in their real estate as they expect to increase their budget and footprint.

The University of California has selected Flad Architects as executive architect for the UCLA Research Park Master Plan Study, a roadmap for the transformation of the former Westside Pavilion shopping mall in Los Angeles into a nexus for discovery and innovation. Leasable lab and office environments will enable industry, academic, and government partners to benefit from collocation with two multidisciplinary research centers.

East Los Angeles Community College District is planning to construct the $145 million Kinesiology, Wellness, and Athletic Complex in Monterey Park, Calif. Designed by HED, the 110,000-sf structure will act as a prominent campus gateway where students can connect with their peers, the local community, and the therapeutic power of nature. The biophilic facility will showcase the college’s health science programs to those attending sporting events, while catalyzing the evolution of the west campus as a destination for personal and social wellbeing.

Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., is a highly collaborative organization at the forefront of both research and clinical care, with 20% of clinical faculty supporting research studies and 12,000 studies under way at any given time. A central paradigm of its translational research workplace is a “condo” model, where a group of investigators with a well-defined mission elect to share research space and equipment to foster collaboration and innovation. Now, a recent initiative is harnessing data in new ways to build upon and expand the power of the condo to advance Mayo Clinic’s mission for decades to come. 

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette began construction in June of 2024 on a significant expansion of the New Iberia Research Center, the nation's largest facility for nonhuman primates. Creating an onsite BSL-3 laboratory for the study of infectious diseases and select agents, the $25 million project will enable the development of novel vaccines, diagnostics, and mitigation solutions. Paul J.

The University of California, Berkeley is planning to construct the Bakar ClimatEnginuity Hub as part of a new downtown innovation zone. Designed by Gensler, the five-story, 145,000-sf facility will provide wet and dry laboratories, collaboration spaces, conference rooms, and offices. The robust structure will also include flexible scale-up suites for the development of renewable energy solutions, carbon-capture technologies, and greener building materials and agricultural practices.