Research and Development

The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology opened the $80 Design Hub in November of 2012. The collaborative facility will support applied research in architecture, creative media, game design, engineering, landscape architecture, industrial design, textiles and fashion design, interior design, and urban design. RMIT is also building the $6.5 million, 10,763-sf Micro Nano Research Facility housing Class 100 and Class 10,000 cleanrooms; occupancy is expected in November of 2013.

The University of Oklahoma broke ground on the $15 million Radar Innovations Lab in October of 2012. Located on the OU Research Campus in Norman, the collaborative 35,000-sf facility will feature high bay laboratory space, prototyping fabrication areas, a testing suite, and two precision anechoic chambers. Completion is expected in fall of 2013.

The University of Hawaii is planning to build the $47.5 Pacific Health Research Lab in Kalaeloa in West Oahu. The 31,000-sf facility will provide biocontainment laboratories for the study of emerging infectious diseases. The project will be a Regional Biosafety Laboratory and is supported by funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Gilead Sciences is planning to begin construction in early 2013 on a 45,000-sf research and development facility in Edmonton, Alberta. Located in the Eco Industrial Business Park, the three-story building will provide offices and laboratories for process chemistry and analytical drug discovery. The facility will be designed by Manasc Isaac Architects to accommodate 80 researchers.

Queen's University Belfast is building the $51 million Centre for Experimental Medicine in the United Kingdom. The four-story facility will support research in genetics, diabetes, and degenerative eye diseases. The facility is located at Belfast City Hospital. Occupancy is expected in 2016.

Grand Valley State University is planning to build a $55 million biology building in Allendale, Mich. Designed by Fishbeck, Thompson, Carr and Huber, the 144,000-sf facility will provide smart classrooms, teaching and research labs, and faculty offices. The laboratory programming and design consultant for the project is RFD (Research Facilities Design) and the construction manager is Pioneer Construction. Completion is expected in fall of 2015.

When the Institute for Animal Health in Pirbright, U.K., launched a significant upgrade of aging infrastructure to improve health- and safety-related systems at its high-level containment facilities, project leaders undertook a benchmarking process to determine how much the upgrades would cost to operate and how Pirbright's organizational structure compared with similar facilities in preparing to meet long-range goals.

Eli Lilly will begin construction in late 2012 on a $140 million expansion of its Indianapolis pharmaceutical manufacturing campus. The 80,000-sf addition will support the production of insulin cartridges. Completion is expected in March of 2014 with operations beginning in 2015. 

The University of Hawaii at Manoa is building the $103 million Cancer Research Center in Honolulu. Designed by Shimokawa Nakamura in partnership with ZGF Architects and Jacobs Consultancy, the five-story, 150,000-sf facility will provide advanced biomedical research laboratories and offices. The lead contractor is A.C. Kobayashi Construction of Honolulu. Ground was broken on the project in October of 2010 and occupancy is expected in February of 2013.

Novartis will invest $500 million to construct a cell-based biomanufacturing facility in Singapore. Located adjacent to its existing pharmaceutical plant in Tuas, the new biologics center will support both clinical and commercial production of biological therapies such as monoclonal antibodies. Construction will begin in early 2013 with full operations commencing in late 2016.

Health Diagnostic Laboratory (HDL) is building a $68.5 million headquarters complex in Richmond. Located in the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park, the Biotech 8 facility will provide 300,000 sf of research and administrative space. The project is being developed in two phases, with the first six-story building reaching completion in December of 2012. Construction will begin on a second six-story building in 2013. The general contractor is Lingerfelt.

Michigan State University is planning to build a $15.5 million testing and assembly building to support the planned Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. Located at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory in East Lansing, the 27,000-sf high bay project will accommodate research on superconducting radio frequency components for particle accelerators.

Kennesaw State University opened a $21 million laboratory building in October of 2012 in Kennesaw, Ga. The five-story, 73,000-sf addition will provide six teaching labs, 17 research labs, and classrooms for the College of Science and Mathematics. Designed by Perkins + Will, the collaborative facility features a confocal microscopy suite and a light-filled atrium that connects the addition to the existing science center. LEED Gold sustainable design certification will be sought for the building, which uses chilled beam technology.

Imagine a state-of-the-art biomedical research facility where some of the brightest scientific minds in the world interact on a daily basis, with each other and with creative thinkers from other fields; where science is conducted not in an isolated lab but in a collaborative and fluid way, encouraging discoveries benefiting all aspects of society.

The University of Oregon opened the $65 million Lewis Integrative Science Building in October of 2012 in Eugene, Ore. The five-story facility provides 103,000 sf of interdisciplinary research, teaching, and collaboration space for the study of nanotechnology, molecular biology, neuroscience, and energy. Designed by THA Architecture and HDR with Lease Crutcher Lewis as construction manager, the building houses wet labs, dry labs, research offices, an MRI suite, an atrium, and shared core equipment areas.