The new $66 million-dollar Plant Sciences Building has officially opened on the Washington State University campus in Pullman, Wash.
The 82,437-sf building is the latest addition to the V. Lane Rawlins Research and Education Complex and will support Washington’s $51 billion food and agriculture industry by providing a modern research venue for faculty and students in the Institute of Biological Chemistry, WSU’s Molecular Plant Science Program, and portions of the Departments of Horticulture, Plant Pathology, and Crop and Soil Sciences.
The building’s exterior reimagines the red-brick campus vernacular in a new architectural approach using a high-performance precast concrete facade panel system clad with a sculpted, red-brick veneer. These panels comprise structure, insulation, weather barrier, interior, and exterior finishes within a single prefabricated component.
The facility will be a social and interdisciplinary heart for the research complex. It is designed for flexibility and hosts infrastructure for a variety of research needs beyond the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences. At the western entry, the building’s cantilevered composition frames a new grand entry for the whole complex.
A four-floor staircase encourages vertical circulation and provides visual connection between floors. At every level, centralized social spaces link circulation elements with the REC’s central spine, designed to fuel spontaneous collaboration within the communal core.
The interior arrangement of laboratories is designed to support efficient and flexible research. The modular laboratories can be easily rearranged to respond to the changing needs of research throughout the building. Offices to the north of the laboratories for Principal Investigators are interspersed with open work areas for graduate researchers. To the south of the laboratories are a series of modular support spaces that accommodate a variety of specialized research equipment within easy reach of the adjacent lab benches.
The project was designed and constructed by the design/build team of Skanska and LMN Architects.
Related Stories
Healthcare Facilities | Jan 6, 2018
A new precision dental center embodies Columbia University’s latest direction for oral medicine education
The facility, which nests at “the core” of the university’s Medical Center, relies heavily on technology and big data.
Giants 400 | Dec 13, 2017
Top 45 science + technology architecture firms
HDR, HOK, and Interior Architects top BD+C’s ranking of the nation’s largest science + technology sector architecture and AE firms, as reported in the 2017 Giants 300 Report.
Healthcare Facilities | Nov 6, 2017
Design isn’t enough to foster collaboration in healthcare and research spaces
A new Perkins Eastman white paper finds limited employee interaction at NYU Winthrop Hospital, a year after it opened.
Laboratories | Sep 22, 2017
Designing for how we learn: Maker spaces and instructional laboratories
Here is how the See + Hear + Do = Remember mantra can be applied to maker spaces and instructional labs.
Laboratories | Sep 12, 2017
New York City is positioning itself as a life sciences hub
A new Transwestern report highlights favorable market and regulatory changes.
Laboratories | Aug 3, 2017
Today’s university lab building by the numbers
A three-month study of science facilities conducted by Shepley Bulfinch reveals key findings related to space allocation, size, and cost.
Laboratories | Jul 18, 2017
Pfizer breaks ground on new R&D campus in St. Louis suburb
The facility will consolidate the company’s local workforce, and provide flexible work and research spaces.
Building Team Awards | Jun 12, 2017
The right prescription: University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences
Silver Award: North Dakota builds a new medical/health sciences school to train and retain more physicians.
Laboratories | Apr 13, 2017
How to design transformative scientific spaces? Put people first
While most labs are designed to achieve that basic functionality, a transformational lab environment prioritizes a science organization’s most valuable assets: its people.
Laboratories | Sep 26, 2016
Construction has finished on the world’s largest forensic anthropology lab, designed by SmithGroupJJR
The lab’s main purpose will be to help in the investigation, recovery, and accounting of Americans lost in past wars.
