Research and Development

Eli Lilly and Company is building a 45,000-sf headquarters facility in Basingstoke in the United Kingdom. Located in the Basing View Enterprise Zone, the project is being built by Muse Developments with Morgan Sindall Construction as general contractor. Designed by TP Bennett, the facility will provide open offices, conference rooms, and collaboration spaces to support the production of Eli Lilly's innovative pharmaceutical therapies. The leased building will be owned by the Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council.

The term “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) was coined in 2016 by Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, to describe the exponential transformation society and commerce are experiencing due to converging breakthroughs in numerous fields, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, the internet of things (IoT), and quantum computing. While this latest advancement is to some degree an extension of the third revolution (aka: The Digital Revolution), 4IR is considered a new era because of the unprecedented speed, scope, and systems impact of the coming changes. It is evolving at an exponential rate rather than a linear one and is expected to disrupt entire systems of production, management, transportation, and governance on a global scale. In response, a new breed of interdisciplinary research facility is emerging, as academic institutions try to anticipate training students for the unforeseen demands of the 4IR.

Tergus Pharma began construction in July of 2019 on a cGMP commercial manufacturing facility in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. An existing 100,000-sf building will undergo renovation to become the company's headquarters, providing production suites, laboratories, offices, packaging lines, and a GMP warehouse. The $35 million project will also include a clinical trial materials manufacturing space and suites for the creation of high-potency compounds and hormones. Completion is expected in early 2020.

Purdue University will begin construction in spring of 2020 on the $140 million Gateway Complex in West Lafayette, Ind. Designed by BSA LifeStructures and Ennead Architects, the multidisciplinary project will provide instructional labs, design studios, collaboration spaces, and active learning environments for the College of Engineering and the Purdue Polytechnic Institute.

ElevateBio has selected DPS Group and TRIA to design ElevateBio BaseCamp, a 108,000-sf cGMP development and manufacturing facility in Waltham. Located in a 430,000-sf office and lab building, the facility will offer integrated R&D, process development, and cGMP manufacturing services for novel therapeutic technologies.

The University of Manitoba opened the $44.5 million Smartpark Innovation Hub in Winnipeg in June of 2019. Designed by Cibinel Architecture to foster collaborative partnerships between industry, academia, and government, the 75,000-sf facility provides laboratories, prototyping suites, multimedia training classrooms, conference rooms, a business incubator, and rentable space for companies.

Imagine a baby born today. She’s smart and science-minded. Through good luck and hard work, she earns her doctorate early, and by age 31, she is solidly embarked on a research career. What does her lab look like? That’s what two SmithGroup thought leaders—Adam Denmark, director of Laboratory Planning, and Steve Palumbo, Science and Technology Studio leader—sought to find out with their team members though a yearlong research initiative they called LAB2050. Collectively, the SmithGroup team and their client advisors defined six categories that they used to project current trends forward—technology, funding and partnerships, energy and the environment, collaboration, synergies, and planning and design—and to visualize the new ones that might emerge.

The University of Windsor celebrated the opening of the CAD$30 million Essex Centre of Research (CORe) in June of 2019 in Windsor, Ontario. Designed by NORR and Hariri Pontarini Architects, the 46,000-sf facility was constructed as an addition to Essex Hall and provides collaborative wet and dry laboratories for the study of advanced materials, transitional health, and medical physics.

Texas A&M University opened the $104 million Medical Research and Education Building II (MREB II) in June of 2019 in Bryan, Texas. Designed by Flad Architects and OMNIPLAN, the 155,077-sf project comprises a 48,200-sf vertical expansion to the existing Medical Research and Education Building (MREB I) and a 122,800-sf addition, enabling the College of Medicine's basic science departments to be collocated in a single campus.

Vermeulens has released its market outlook report for the first quarter of 2019. Key points include:

The University of Missouri System broke ground on the $221 million NextGen Precision Health Institute in June of 2019. Located at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the five-story, 265,000-sf translational research facility will accommodate over 60 principal investigators working in collaboration with industry partners to develop innovative personalized medicine solutions.

The University of California, San Francisco opened the $275 million Precision Cancer Medicine Building (PCMB) in June of 2019. Located on UCSF's Mission Bay campus, the six-story facility consolidates outpatient services in a 170,000-sf structure with integrated cancer research labs, 63,000 sf of clinical space, 45 infusion bays, two accelerator vaults, and sophisticated imaging and diagnostic suites.

HITT Contracting opened the Co|Lab smart building research hub in June of 2019 in Falls Church, Va. Designed by William McDonough + Partners, Co|Lab is a collaborative facility for the study and testing of emerging materials, approaches, and technologies for the construction industry. The 8,600-sf project, which has attained LEED v4 Platinum certification, incorporates a Glu-lam and Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) structure, as well as a roof canopy solar array that is designed to provide 118 percent of anticipated energy use.

The Harvard Allston Land Company (HALC) issued a request for proposals in June of 2019 for the development of a 14-acre parcel in Boston. HALC, the entity responsible for Harvard University's planned Enterprise Research Campus, is seeking a single partner with an integrated team of architects, engineers, construction managers, government-relations personnel, and financiers for the project. Uses planned for the area and approved by Boston’s development authority include:

Hewlett Packard (HP) opened the 3D Printing and Digital Manufacturing Center of Excellence in June of 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. Supporting leading-edge research and development in additive manufacturing, the facility provides sophisticated research labs and instrumentation suites as well as a large-scale factory environment for active collaboration with customers and industry partners.