Education

Campus Lab Designed by ARC

ARC-Designed Laboratory Building Unites Academic Research and Private Industry

Institute for Applied Life Sciences

Amherst, MA – A newly completed research facility on the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts is bringing together academic and private industry partners to advance life sciences research into products, services, and technologies benefiting human health and well-being.

Designed by Boston-based architects ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge for the Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS), the 76,500sf Life Sciences Laboratory II (LSL2) fit-up includes specialized laboratories, device prototype production facilities, and a conference and learning center.

ARC’s flexible and open design is fostering new opportunities for teaming between university researchers and private industry life sciences companies. To support this integration, the laboratory and research spaces offer a broad array of specialized core equipment and easily adaptable labs to create one of the nation’s most advanced translational research and drug therapy discovery collaborations.

“The LSL2 labs, research facilities, and core equipment resources allow the University of Massachusetts and its Institute for Applied Life Sciences to become the partner of choice for top-tier pharmaceutical, biotech, medical products, and clinical research organizations,” said Adrian Walters, lab planner for LSL2 with ARC.

“The design team creatively adapted an existing shell building into a novel research facility, requiring the planning and design of several highly technical spaces,” said Bryan Thorp, senior project manager for LSL2 with ARC. “For a lab fit-up of this scale, we usually encounter one or two of these specialized environments. Here, the entire building features complex technical spaces. The challenge was to provide an integrated and flexible design to accommodate a diversity of uses, and to support the specialized labs and core facilities equipment with the right systems infrastructure.”

In addition to its partnering mission, the institute also advances the university’s educational and economic development missions by training the current and next-generation workforce in the technical skills and entrepreneurial spirit necessary to succeed in today’s life sciences industry.