PROVIDENCE, R.I.— Renovations at 164 Angell Street, a Brown University building in Providence—formerly known as the Brown Office Building—have been completed.

Shawmut Design and Construction, a construction management firm based in Providence, and with locations across the country, was the general contractor on this approximately $25 million project. Done in partnership with the Architecture Research Office, work included gutting the second, third and fourth floors of the 1970 building and transforming the space into a vibrant multidisciplinary hub.

“Our team was honored to revitalize such an important Brown University building to create a contemporary, state-of-the-art space for interrelated academic groups,” said Ron Simoneau, vice president at Shawmut.

“Our long-standing partnership with Brown University resulted in a coordinated approach that upholds the original design of 164 Angell Street, while promoting greater synergies and opportunities for collaboration.”

The nearly 50-year-old building had been characterized by its narrow and dark interiors, but is now highlighted by a design that focuses on natural light.

The renovated space includes state-of-the-art conference rooms with updated technology and video conference capabilities. The building’s systems and structure were overhauled, including the replacement of approximately 40 percent of the precast façade with curtainwall, new mechanical, engineering and plumbing systems, as well as elevator systems, and an updated enclosed lobby space off Angell Street.

Not only did the extensive renovation improve the interior design and work environment for its occupants, but several centers, institutes and departments are able to move into the same building. 164 Angell Street now houses these entities from across the Brown campus: the Carney Institute for Brain Science, the Center for Computational Molecular Biology, the Data Science Initiative, the Department of Education, and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.

The Brown Bookstore, located on the ground, mezzanine and basement floors remained operational throughout the project, requiring careful planning and coordination.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Shawmut Design and Construction joined the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) to break ground on the institute’s first new student residence in 30 years.

Designed by award-winning architect and RISD alumnus Nader Tehrani and his Boston-based firm NADAAA, the new 43,500-square-foot residence hall will house 153 students on six floors. Part of a larger quad enhancement project, it will feature amenities like workrooms, makerspace, bike storage, a shared kitchen, and outdoor terrace, and upon completion, it will allow for the phased renovations of Nickerson and Homer Halls.

“We’re incredibly proud to build RISD its first new residence facility in 30 years,” said Ron Simoneau, vice president at Shawmut. “With collaboration, paired with Shawmut’s IPD and lean construction principles, at the center of the construction and design teams approach, I am confident this project will be a success while marking a transformational moment for the campus.”

Slated to open in August 2019, the state-of-the-art project will engage an Integrated Project Delivery Method (IPD) to collaboratively fuse the talents of the team. The innovative design is influenced by thoughtful input from the campus community, including common spaces for socializing, making, reflecting and creative expression, and is tailored to meet the needs of RISD’s art and design students.

The new residence hall will be located at 60 Waterman St. on the campus’ residential quad. Site work on the new residence building began this August and included excavation and retaining wall construction. In June 2019, renovation of Nickerson Hall begins and is expected to be completed in August 2020. At that time, Homer Hall Phase 1 renovation will begin and will be completed in January 2021. Phase 2 of the Homer Hall renovation begins in January 2021 and will be complete in August of that same year.

Construction of the new residence hall is one facet of RISD’s 2015 Campus Master Plan. One update to the original plan was that RISD engaged NADAAA in the fall of 2016 for a study of the campus’ residential quad. The goals of the study were to develop 500 beds of interconnected first-year housing on the residential quad, to allow for the renovation of Homer and Nickerson Halls to address deferred maintenance while maintaining overall bed count, to create student-centered common spaces, to improve campus and city connections to the residential quad in order to maximize accessibility to and within the residential quad, to address sustainability, and to provide updated space for existing administrative offices.

NADAAA’s work over the academic year included numerous meetings with campus constituents, a student survey, monthly meetings with the campus project team, presentations to the Board of Trustees in October, February and June, development of multiple options that were reduced through the project team, Campus Master Plan Committee and Board meetings to a final scheme that was presented to the Board in June of 2017.

“We are thrilled to be able to offer a new residence hall that so fully supports the education we offer our students,” said Jack Silva, vice president of RISD Campus Services. “Planning the residence hall has been a true collaborative effort and we are pleased to be working again with alumnus Nader Tehrani and to have Shawmut as a partner in leading the project.”

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The Lincoln School in Providence, an independent college preparatory school offering an all-girls educational program for grades 1st through 12^th, announced the grand opening of its new state-of-the-art STEAM building.

The new facility features a brand new two-story facade, 4,000-square-feet of interdisciplinary learning space, flexible breakout areas and a rotating art gallery.

The main goal of the project was to expand Lincoln School’s offerings as the nation’s only independent school for girls rooted in Quaker values with Rhode Island’s first-ever dedicated STEAM facility for girls.

Through the expansion, Lincoln is positioned to shift the gender balance of women entering STEAM fields. Not only does Lincoln offer a robust STEAM curriculum—including electives in robotics and computer science — but, they also go beyond the classroom to engage in Upper School partnerships with Brown’s School of Engineering, RISD’s School of Architecture, and The Steel Yard.

The STEAM Hub, designed by LLB Architects of Pawtucket, R.I., is quite literally a visual expression of the school’s mantra, “where tradition meets innovation”, according to Vice President of Shawmut Design and Construction, Ron Simoneau.

The addition features a dramatic glass curtainwall facing west with 20 vertical fins, or sun shades, spaced in such a way as to create rolling shade as the sun moves. The modern, curvilinear design allows people outside to see adjacent buildings through the new addition.

The new facility creates new agile classroom space for group collaboration and project-based learning, improve connectivity, all while making the facility more sustainable and resilient.

The chemistry, robotics, and physics rooms are highlighted by enlarged, dynamic group study spaces and a math/engineering collaborative workspace anchors the new addition. All classroom and study spaces are more open, connected and flexible for a myriad of teaching and learning modes. The kitchen was reconfigured to provide a direct flow from the dining room and student lounges to a new student/faculty study space along Butler Avenue that overlooks Blackstone Boulevard and Park.

 “Academic design and construction trends are certainly seeing a shift towards facilities that have stronger collaborative, living-learning, and interdisciplinary amenities, and Lincoln’s new STEAM Hub does exactly that. The facility allows their faculty to guide students in interdisciplinary coursework that gives them the opportunity to learn, explore, and break new ground in their future fields,” said Simoneau.

 The project broke ground on July 1, 2017 and was completed less than a year later with a grand opening on May 3, 2018.

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The first two years of the students’ education will occur on the school’s Mount Pleasant campus. The third and fourth years will take place in various medical facilities in Saginaw, including a Central Michigan University campus and education sites associated with Covenant HealthCare and St. Mary’s of Michigan.

Of the 64 students, 37, 57 are from Michigan and 11 are graduates of Central Michigan’s undergraduate program. These students were selected from a competitive pool of 2,700 applicants for the 2013-2014 academic year.

While the initial goal was to admit 80 percent Michigan natives, the actual total came out to 89 percent for this year. Central Michigan plans to admit 104 students for the 2014-2015 academic school year. More students will be admitted each year as the program progresses, eventually capping the total at 400 students.

The application committee focused on students who were committed to communities in Michigan lacking medical resources. “As the only medical school in Michigan training doctors to address the needs of residents and families living in more rural regions, we selected students with a passion for medically underserved communities,” Dean Ernie Yoder said in a recent statement.

Predictions from 2008 of future shortages of doctors trained in the United States spurred the planning stage for the introduction of the new medical school at Central Michigan. The University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University were the only schools in Michigan that included medical schools at the time of the forecasts. Since 2008, Western Michigan University and Oakland University have begun medical schools in additional to Central Michigan.

The opening of the College of Medicine marks a big step for the university, which began in 1892 as the Central Michigan Normal School and Business College.
 

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Featuring more than 550,000 square feet, the massive seven-story building, designed by HOK, will be comprised of two L-shaped structures that will provide connectivity to the interdisciplinary campus.

“There are multiple institutions that are coming together to create a new sense of critical mass all within location,” said Kenneth Drucker, FAIA, design principal for the project and design director at HOK’s New York office. “The school is sort of a vessel where this common link can occur.”

The university’s new children’s hospital, medical offices, medical school, clinical and translational research center, Gates Vascular Institute, Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the existing Buffalo-Niagara campus will operate with the central building.

Approximately 2,000 students, staff and faculty will utilize the space daily along with its connection to other buildings, via linking bridges and stairways, Drucker said. Providing even further connectivity is the incorporation of the Allen Street transit hub, to be housed on the ground floor of the building.

The construction of the new school building, which is seeking LEED Gold certification, is part of a greater vision to create a state-of-the-art downtown medical campus by 2020.

The surrounding downtown area, with a noteworthy architectural history, can be sensitive to new buildings, Drucker said, so the architects were challenged to produce a design both complementary to surrounding style and environmentally friendly.

“Doing a building in Buffalo has significance because in the 20s and 30s it’s where all the great architecture was happening at the time, with Sullivan and Wright and Yamasaki,” Drucker said. “It still has a very significant architectural heritage, so it’s important that the building has the same level of craft and architectural distinction as some of the other historic projects of Buffalo.”

The design features a glass curtainwall system and the façade of the building highlights a large terra cotta rain screen.

“We found that Buffalo, because of the climate and because historically its been a city about masonry, that we wanted to use a material that was closer to masonry something not of brick,” Drucker said.

Terra cotta, an organic material made of clay, provided the look and function most desirable to the project, Drucker said.

“The reason why this is important to us is because it’s a large building and we consider it to be an indigenous material to the area,” Drucker said. “And it creates and exudes a feeling of warmth and precision and cleanliness.”

A six-floor glass atrium, which connects the two L-shaped buildings, will help to illuminate the building with natural daylight along with the buildings skylight system and two glass walls. The use of L-shaped layouts was motivated by a want to bring an abundant amount of natural daylight as deep into the space as possible.

“We believe very strongly in the use of natural daylight,” Drucker said. “The width of the two Ls that contain the majority of the program are very narrow, so we can get daylight into the lab space and the atrium.”

The second floor of the building will hold several classrooms and educational spaces as well as a library and café. A bridge on this floor will link the new children’s hospital and medical offices to the building.

The building’s classrooms will now be able to hold 180 students as opposed to the current 140. But the designs versatility also allows for larger classrooms to be broken down into smaller learning units

“Instead of just lectures and large classrooms for lectures, there are a variety of different classrooms sizes that break down the scale from 180 to classrooms for 100 to semi-rooms for less than 20,” Drucker said. “So, there can be specific learning and smaller units.

The third, fourth and fifth floors will hold 150,000 square feet of research laboratories. The sixth floor will house the building’s simulation lab and robotics lab, and the seventh floor will be equipped with a gross anatomy facility.

Groundbreaking on the project is scheduled for September 2013 with completion in 2016.
 

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The process for the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine, named after a renowned medical illustrator, began in January 2010 and is set to have its first class in August 2013. Following a year of internal study and a six-month feasibility study, construction for the project is projected to take 11 months and will turn a 120,000-sqaure-foot building in to a state-of-the-art medical facility.

The building is set to feature operating and examination rooms, classrooms, student and faculty offices and a morgue. In addition, there will be a 300-seat auditorium, lecture halls and a 100-person multipurpose room with a video feed from the auditorium.

Standing at three stories, the school will be used by students from across academic disciplines, including the School of Nursing and the School of Health Sciences.

The renovated building will connect to Building 1, an 180,000-square-foot space that is home to the schools of health sciences, nursing and education. A 25,000-square-foot atrium will be feature event space and open areas on the first two floors, with the top floor serving as a health sciences library.

"We will train medical students with nursing students and physician assistant students because healthcare more and more is a team activity," said Bruce Koeppen, founding dean at the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine.

The school will focus on training medical students to enter the primary care field, since according to Koeppen; there is a severe shortage for primary care physicians.

"Right now if you look at the national statistics about 15 percent of current medical students are planning a career in primary care," said Koeppen. "We hope that 50 percent or more of our graduates will go into primary care."

With studies indicating medical field salaries are lower and work hour control is less in the field, students are choosing to go in to more specialized fields.

The medical school will start recruiting students in the fall, with 60 spots available to be filled.

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