Higher Education

Trinity College Dublin opened the $90 million Trinity Business School in May of 2019 in the Republic of Ireland. Offering six stories above grade and two below, the 123,000-sf facility features an innovation and entrepreneurship hub, smart classrooms, a 600-seat auditorium, a rooftop conference room, and a 200-person dining area. Leveraging natural lighting and ventilation strategies, the project was designed to optimize occupant health and wellbeing and features a central atrium, a living wall, a brise soleil, and a double-skin façade with high-performance glazing.

The Rockefeller University dedicated the $500 million Stavros Niarchos Foundation–David Rockefeller River Campus in May of 2019 in New York. The 160,000-sf complex features the $300 million, 135,600-sf Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Research Building which provides flexible labs, two amphitheaters, offices, conference rooms, a dining area, and outdoor terraces. The two-story, horizontally oriented structure was designed to enhance collaboration and can support over 600 scientific staff.

A two-year, $55 million renovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Everitt Laboratory has transformed the four-story, 136,763-sf building into the first engineering-based medical school in the country, with a focus on medical simulation, research, and instruction. With final completion in June 2018 and the first medical classes starting in July, the Carle Illinois Medical School’s state-of-the-art features enable bioengineering students and future medical professionals to engage in project/problem-based learning and maximize their medical training by using the latest simulation and virtual reality technology.

Orange Coast College broke ground on the $36 million Kinesiology and Athletics Complex in May of 2019 in Costa Mesa, Calif. Designed by Little Diversified Architectural Consulting, the three-building, 88,000-sf project will house division offices, athletic training and adaptive physical education rooms, student support spaces, locker rooms, a 65-meter competition pool, a 25-meter instructional pool, and a covered 450-person bleacher. General contractor C.W.

Georgia Tech opened the $375 million Coda building in May of 2019. Located at Technology Square in Atlanta, the 755,000-sf innovation hub provides interdisciplinary research space for Georgia Tech's data analytics and computational science programs, as well as offering leasable offices and labs for industry partners. The 21-story tower features a central piazza with a spiral staircase leading to the Collaboration Core, a series of six three-story vertical atriums that join the wings of the building.

Virginia Tech began construction in April of 2019 on the $105 million Living Learning Community in Blacksburg, Va. Part of the planned Creativity + Innovation District, the mixed-use residential complex will provide multipurpose teaching and learning spaces on the ground floor, including teaching studios, seminar rooms, a performance hall, practice rooms, maker spaces, and shops for working with wood, metal, and paint. The upper stories of the three-wing complex will offer 596 student beds and apartments for faculty and visiting academics.

Franklin College dedicated its new Science Center in May of 2019 in Franklin, Ind. Designed by BSA LifeStructures, the $17 million renovation and expansion project transformed the existing 30,000-sf science building into a two-story, 51,000-sf facility featuring flexible learning spaces that combine laboratory and lecture functions.

The University of Notre Dame’s Campus Crossroads project, compleletd in 2017, transforms the iconic Notre Dame football stadium into a vibrant multi-use campus hub and student center with near constant activity. As the largest, most ambitious construction project in the university’s 175-year history, the stadium remodel includes the addition of three new adjacent buildings that provide more than 800,000-sf of academic, athletic, and student life space designed to increase interaction and wellbeing.

Midwestern State University is building the $40 million Centennial Hall in Wichita Falls, Texas. Housing the Gunn College of Health Sciences and Human Services, the four-story, 87,000-sf building will feature an 80-person round classroom, a learning stair, a collaborative student lounge, and a full-height atrium. The center will provide simulation training suites, classrooms, and teaching labs for programs in nursing, dental hygiene, radiologic sciences, respiratory care, and social work.

The University of Strathclyde is building the £60 million Learning & Teaching Building in Glasgow in the United Kingdom. Designed by BDP to support innovative pedagogies, the flexible academic hub will provide 150-person collaborative classrooms, a learning village for individual study, student-facing support services, and space for the University of Strathclyde Students’ Association. The 215,000-sf project will incorporate two existing buildings and is slated for occupancy in fall of 2020.

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) celebrated the opening of the Cobb County Research Facility South in May of 2019. Located in Smyrna on land purchased from Lockheed Martin, the 350,000-sf campus houses the Aerospace, Transportation, and Advanced Systems Laboratory (ATAS); the Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Hardware Evaluation Research Laboratory (CIPHER); the Electronic Systems Laboratory (ELSYS); and the Sensors and Electromagnetic Applications Laboratory (SEAL).

Ohio State University broke ground in May of 2019 on the $33.5 million Wooster Science Building. Designed by Hasenstab Architects, the 60,000-sf facility will provide the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences with undergraduate chemistry teaching labs, multifunctional classrooms, an entomology research unit, an insect zoo, and a café. The project is located on the school's Wooster campus and will accommodate programs for the Agricultural Technical Institute (ATI) and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC).

Universities across the country are looking to assemble students and faculty from different research interests in spaces that promote cross-disciplinary collaboration. Successful designs call for exteriors that beckon the entire campus community and flexible interior features that enable the institution to refresh the mix of researchers and projects at regular intervals. Such projects also call for encouraging a campus-wide sense of ownership of the building while establishing a space application review process. Opened in January 2017, the University of Idaho’s $52 million Integrated Research and Innovation Center (IRIC) works to accomplish these goals through building design choices and ongoing space management decisions. Randy Benedict, design leader and principal at NBBJ, and Russell McClanahan, IRIC facility manager, describe how those two activities—design and building management—work to make the IRIC a hub of interdisciplinary interactions at the campus in Moscow, Idaho.

Colorado State University opened the $65 million C. Wayne McIlwraith Translational Medicine Institute in May of 2019 in Fort Collins. The 130,000-sf facility provides the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences with equine and small animal surgery suites, flexible research labs, imaging rooms, instructional spaces, a surgical skills training lab, executive offices, and a 200-seat lecture hall.

Virginia Commonwealth University is planning to build a $121 million facility in Richmond to accommodate programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Located on the Monroe Park Campus, the six-story, 168,000-sf teaching and research facility will provide wet and dry labs for programs in chemistry, biology, physics, psychology and kinesiology.