Higher Education

St. John's University broke ground on the $106 million Health Sciences Center in New York in May of 2022. Located on the Queens campus, the 70,000-sf facility will provide state-of-the-art laboratories, active learning classrooms, and simulation suites to train the next generation of caregivers. Housing the School of Nursing and other allied health programs, the project will promote interprofessional education with flexible teaching venues where teams of students can work together.

Spelman College began construction in May of 2022 on the $86 million Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation & the Arts in Atlanta. Designed by Studio Gang and Goode Van Slyke Architecture, the 84,000-sf facility will accommodate thriving programs in dance, documentary filmmaking, photography, music, and theater and performance. Opening onto a public plaza, the five-story building will include The Porch, a community-facing zone with a dance performance studio, a black box theater, an art gallery, and a café.

Caltech broke ground in May of 2022 on the $100 million Resnick Sustainability Center in Pasadena, Calif. Designed by the Yazdani Studio of CannonDesign, the 79,500-sf building will house interdisciplinary laboratories that will be accessible to investigators and innovators from across the Caltech community. The collaborative three-story structure will initially accommodate four research hubs:

George Mason University broke ground in May of 2022 on the $84 million Life Sciences and Engineering Building in Manassas, Va. Located on the Science and Technology Campus in Prince William County, the 133,000-gsf facility will accommodate STEM-H programs in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health sciences.

The University of California San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering just opened Franklin Antonio Hall, a 187,000-gsf LEED platinum building that contains 13 collaborative laboratories, two 100-seat active learning classrooms, faculty offices, a 250-seat learning innovation studio, and a 2,000-gsf café. The “collaboratory” concept informs tenant selection, group adjacency planning, and space customization processes, with an eye toward fostering collaboration between different fields of research and industry partners. Cross-discipline, faculty-led research groups will share collaboratory spaces and focus on real-world issues, such as renewable energy technologies, smart cities and smart transportation, wearable and robotics innovations, real-time data analysis and decision making, digital privacy and security, nanotechnology, and precision medicine. The building design and construction process was also highly collaborative, utilizing an integrated CM/GC approach that brought together all players to form a cohesive team.

Central Washington University opened the $60 million Health Sciences Building in Ellensburg in April of 2022. Designed by LMN Architects with Research Facilities Design (RFD) as laboratory design consultant, the 80,748-gsf facility provides sophisticated learning environments for programs in public health, emergency medicine, biomechanics, clinical physiology, exercise science, and nutrition.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham broke ground on the Altec/Styslinger Genomic Medicine and Data Sciences Building in April of 2022. Designed by Williams Blackstock Architects, the $78 million project involves the renovation and expansion of the existing Lyons-Harrison Research Building to accommodate leading-edge laboratories, computational suites, collaboration spaces, meeting rooms, and offices.

North Carolina State University dedicated the $160.2 million Plant Sciences Building in Raleigh in April of 2022. Designed by Flad Architects, the 185,000-sf facility enables academic, government, and industry researchers to develop innovative solutions for global agricultural challenges.

Michigan Technological University will begin construction in May of 2022 on the H-STEM Engineering and Health Technologies Complex in Houghton. Designed by HED, the $45 million project will accommodate integrated educational programs in health-related fields and accelerate the creation of human-centered technological innovations.

Lehigh University opened the $145 million Health, Science and Technology Building in spring of 2022 in Bethlehem, Pa. Designed by HGA to promote interdisciplinary collaboration, the 200,000-gsf facility features flexible open laboratories for research programs in biohealth, energy, and materials science. Interior glass walls enhance visibility and connectivity in the five-story structure, which includes multipurpose instructional venues, the Health Data Warehouse, and the administrative home of the College of Health.

George Mason University broke ground in April of 2022 on Fuse at Mason Square in Arlington, Va. Designed by EYP Architecture & Engineering, the $243 million facility will accommodate the Institute for Digital Innovation and graduate programs for the School of Computing. Seamlessly integrating academic, research, and commercial endeavors, the 345,000-sf building will drive collaboration among students, faculty, industry, and government partners to discover new solutions for the world’s grand challenges.

Mayo Clinic began construction in April of 2022 on the $134.6 million Integrated Education and Research Building in Phoenix. Designed CO Architects and DFDG Architecture, the 150,000-sf facility will house the College of Medicine and Science and its five schools: the Alix School of Medicine, the School of Graduate Medical Education, the School of Health Sciences, the School of Biomedical Sciences, and the School of Continuous Professional Development.

The University of Arkansas broke ground in April of 2022 on the Institute for Integrative & Innovative Research (I3R) in Fayetteville. Designed by HGA and Hufft, the $137.6 million facility will house five centers of excellence to drive discovery and commercialization in the overlapping fields of data science, food systems, materials science and engineering, integrative systems neuroscience, and metabolism bioscience and bioengineering.

Stony Brook University’s Renaissance School of Medicine in Stony Brook, N.Y., has increased its capacity for ultra-low-temperature freezer storage, a need that became critical nationwide in early 2021 when the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine required that level of storage, limiting which hospitals and pharmacies could offer it. Stony Brook’s new 560,000-sf Medical and Research Translation facility contains a low-temp walk-in (LTW) Freezer Farm suite with eight minus-80-degree-Celsius permanent storage chambers and a minus-20-degree-Celsius storage corridor with a combined capacity of over 1.8 million samples. This is the equivalent storage of 80 traditional point-of-use (POU) stand-alone freezer units.

Virginia Tech began construction in April of 2022 on the $69.5 million Undergraduate Science Laboratory Building in Blacksburg. The 102,366-gsf facility will feature 26 wet, dry, and specialty labs designed to be flexible and adaptable to the current and future instructional needs of the College of Science, the College of Engineering, the College of Natural Resources and Environment, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.