Academic Medical

The University of Glasgow officially opened the £32 million Imaging Centre of Excellence in late March of 2017. Located at the South Glasgow Hospitals campus in Scotland, the facility features a 7-Tesla clinical MRI scanner to support advanced neurological and cardiovascular research. The building also houses neurosurgery operating suites and a biomedical business incubator called the Clinical Innovation Zone. The project was designed by BMJ Architects and built by BAM Construction.

The University of Texas Medical Branch broke ground on the $90 million Health Education Building in Galveston in April of 2017. The five-story, 166,000-sf facility will support collaborative interprofessional education programs with large learning studios, technology-rich labs, flipped classrooms, and simulation training suites. The construction manager-at-risk for the project is Vaughn Construction. Occupancy is expected in spring of 2019.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center officially broke ground in April of 2017 on the $119 million Balbach Global Center for Advanced Interprofessional Learning in Omaha. Serving as the headquarters for the Interprofessional Experiential Center for Enduring Learning (iEXCEL), the four-story, 191,884-sf facility will feature simulation suites and virtual immersive reality environments for medical training. The ground floor of the building will be occupied by the National Center for Health Security and Biopreparedness.

Stockton University is building the $33.2 million Unified Science Center 2 in Galloway, N.J. The three-story, 58,210-sf facility will house teaching and research labs, a vivarium, a gross anatomy lab, a multipurpose room, a greenhouse, and faculty offices. The $15.2 million, 37,720-sf Health Sciences Center is also under construction and will provide simulation suites, an exercise science lab, and space for the sustainability program. Both projects are slated for occupancy in 2018.

The University of Cincinnati Health is building the $60.5 million Gardner Neuroscience Institute in the Corryville area of Cincinnati. The 114,000-sf outpatient facility was designed by Perkins+Will to provide patient-centered neurological and psychiatric care. The four-story project will include an auditorium, a patient lounge, a café, an outdoor rehabilitation area, and an underground parking garage. Ground was broken on the facility in February of 2017 and occupancy is expected in 2019. The construction cost of the building is $26.6 million. 

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.

The Medical College of Georgia is engaged in a $62.5 million expansion of its cancer research facilities in Augusta. Designed to promote interaction between clinicians and researchers, the project includes the creation of a three-story facility housing offices and collaboration space connecting the M.

The University of Tampa is planning to construct the 90,000-sf Graduate and Health Studies Building to accommodate programs in nursing and allied health professions. Designed by Beck Architecture and KWJ Architects, the six-story facility will also provide smart classrooms, simulation suites, conference rooms, faculty and administrative offices, health science labs, and study spaces. LEED sustainable design certification will be sought for the project, which is slated for completion in fall of 2018. 

UNC Rex Healthcare opened the $235 million Heart and Vascular Hospital in Raleigh in March of 2017. Located on the University of North Carolina medical campus, the eight-story, 300,000-sf tower houses 127 inpatient rooms, an intensive care unit, and two large hybrid operating rooms to accommodate complex surgical procedures. General contractor Skanska began work on the facility in September of 2014 for a construction contract value of $93 million.

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.

The University of California, San Francisco will break ground in April of 2017 on the $275 million Precision Cancer Medicine Building. Designed by Stantec to optimize the delivery of patient-centered care, the 170,000-gsf facility will provide 63,000 sf of clinical space, 45 infusion bays, two accelerator vaults, specialized medical laboratories, and diagnostic instrumentation suites. The six-story building is located on UCSF's Mission Bay campus and will enable the consolidation of outpatient services in a centralized location.

The University of Texas at Austin used a discovery-driven planning process to design the Dell Medical School, the first new academic medical center built from the ground up at a tier-one public university in almost 50 years. The project required developing an accredited curriculum and designing the initial building without any pre-existing faculty, students, or dean. Designed to connect the campus medical district to the rest of the university and downtown Austin, the new 75,000-sf Health Learning Building features flexible team-based learning studios with natural light, an all-digital library with no books, state-of-the-art medical simulation labs, and abundant indoor and outdoor social spaces that make it a dynamic community hub.

SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital is partnering with SLUCare Physician Group to build a $550 million academic medical center in St. Louis. Sited adjacent to the existing hospital campus, the 800,000-sf facility will provide a Level I trauma center and emergency department, 316 private inpatient rooms, intensive care units, and an ambulatory care center. Ground will be broken on the project in late August of 2017 with completion expected in September of 2020. 

The University of Cincinnati began construction in March of 2017 on the $61 million Health Sciences Building. The collaborative four-story facility was designed by Perkins+Will to support interprofessional medical education programs for the College of Allied Health Sciences. The 117,000-sf building will provide laboratories, classrooms, and offices. Completion is expected by early 2019.

“Convergence” is the term increasingly used to describe the intermingling of disciplines in next-gen academic research facilities. Embodied by today’s moonshot-type initiatives targeting big picture-level discovery, convergence has been dubbed “the next scientific revolution.” It is characterized by collaboration among experts in multiple fields of endeavor tackling the major scientific problems of our time. From a facility perspective, convergence goes beyond the organizational progression that has seen traditional departmental siloes challenged by the move to multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary or clustered research. It brings together many diverse specialties, from biomedicine to engineering to business to law, in a single place.