Sustainability

Efforts to make mass timber construction a viable alternative to concrete and steel took a giant step forward last year when Walmart announced that the 2.4 million sf of office buildings on its new Bentonville, Ark., headquarters campus would use a structural system of cross-laminated timber manufactured from regionally harvested southern yellow pine. It’s not just in the office environment where wood is becoming a contender. “We see increasing interest in using mass timber structures for research/lab buildings, especially at universities that are in major timber-producing regions,” says John Starr, a principal at Lord Aeck Sargent, a Katerra Company (LAS). Starr cited facilities at Georgia Tech, Oregon State, and Michigan State as examples.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities has attained the world's first WELL Health-Safety Rating for laboratory space at Alexandria LaunchLabs in New York City. Augmenting the center’s existing WELL certification for building design, the WELL Health-Safety Rating for Facilities Operations and Management includes further measures to protect the health of tenants, employees, visitors, and service personnel. Protocols at Alexandria LaunchLabs include:

The University of California, Irvine began construction on a $134 million health sciences complex in October of 2020. Designed by The S/L/A/M Collaborative and HED, the project will enhance synergies between the disciplines of medicine, nursing, population health, and pharmacy to deliver a dynamic pedagogy of team-based care. Supporting an innovative curriculum based on integrative health, the complex is expected to be a national model for the future of interprofessional education.

Carleton University began construction in November of 2020 on the CAD$16 million Engineering Design Centre in Ottawa. Enabling undergraduate students to engage in hands-on, experiential learning, the collaborative 25,000-sf facility will provide design studios, workshops bays, instructional venues, meeting rooms, and formal and informal interaction areas. A maker space on the ground floor will accommodate sophisticated equipment including 3D printers, injection molders, and laser and water jet cutters.

The University of Massachusetts Medical School is planning to construct the $325 million New Education and Research Building in Worcester. Accommodating 77 principal investigators, the nine-story, 350,000-sf facility will include space for animal research as well as housing an FDA-compliant manufacturing center for clinical trial therapeutics. The project will enable UMass to increase its class sizes help meet the needs of the commonwealth and the nation for physicians, graduate nurses, life sciences researchers, and other health sciences professionals.

The University of Texas at El Paso opened the $93.5 million Interdisciplinary Research Building in September of 2020. Designed by Perkins+Will, the 156,000-sf project provides collaborative research labs, a vivarium, imaging suites, core labs, a visualization suite, conference rooms, an atrium, an auditorium, and academic and administrative offices. Housing teams from multiple departments, the flexible facility can be easily adapted to accommodate changing program requirements.

BMW Group opened the FIZ Projekthaus Nord complex in Munich in September of 2020. Representing an expansion of the company's existing R&D campus, the collaborative facility provides 1.6 billion square feet of space for engineering, research, collaboration, and administration. Comprising two office structures and a test-bench building, the integrated complex offers a dynamically connected work environment enabled by 20,000 servers and a data storage capacity of 90 petabytes.

California State University, Dominguez Hills completed construction in September of 2020 on the $71.5 million Science & Innovation Building in Carson. Designed by HGA Architects and Engineers with Research Facilities Design (RFD) as laboratory design consultant, the 87,000-sf facility provides classrooms, labs, and faculty offices to support programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania broke ground in September of 2020 on the $90 million Kopchick Hall in Indiana, Pa. Designed by PWWG Architects, the highly flexible facility will provide the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics with 16 reconfigurable teaching labs, 43 research lab modules, three classrooms, and two multifunctional computer labs.

The University of Washington and Gonzaga University broke ground in September of 2020 on a $60 million medical education hub in Spokane. Supporting the Regional Health Partnership initiative, the 90,000-sf facility will offer classrooms, interactive learning environments, research labs, an anatomy suite, and administrative offices. McKinstry, the developer of the public-private project, will own and manage the building, which will provide leased space for the UW School of Medicine and Gonzaga's programs in human physiology and nursing.

Johnson Controls opened the $37 million OpenBlue Innovation Center at the National University of Singapore in September of 2020. Located in the School of Design and Environment's SDE4 building, the 2,600-sf facility is a living laboratory for the development of customizable, contact-free applications built on Johnson Controls' unifying digital technology suite, OpenBlue.

Front Range Community College opened the $35 million Health Care Careers Center (HCCC) in September of 2020 in Fort Collins, Colo. Designed by Hord Coplan Macht, the 61,000-sf facility offers technology-rich classrooms, teaching labs, collaboration spaces, and group learning venues for programs in nursing and allied health professions.

Avista Development and McKinstry opened the $40 million Catalyst Building in Spokane in September of 2020. Designed by Michael Green Architecture, the five-story, 159,000-sf facility was built by Katerra using cross-laminated timber (CLT) structural components. Certified by the International Living Future Institute, the zero-carbon, net-zero building features a highly efficient heating and cooling system, a sophisticated building envelope, LED lighting, and integrated energy management technologies.

Kajima Corporation, one of Japan's largest construction companies, broke ground in August of 2020 on the $100 million Global Hub in Singapore. Designed to accelerate the creation of new building technologies, the 141,000-sf innovation center will feature a comprehensive robotic solutions suite. The Kajima Technical Research Institute Singapore (KaTris) will be located in the facility, which will leverage advanced automation and digitalization systems to optimize energy performance and reduce carbon emissions.

The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) launched the latest version of the WELL Building Standard in September of 2020. Following two years of extensive development, in-use application, and review, WELL v2 is a vehicle for buildings and organizations to deliver spaces that contribute to improved human health through design strategies, operational protocols, performance standards, and policies that foster a culture of well-being.