Biological Sciences Center, Third and Fourth Floors Renovations

University of Minnesota

The two-floor renovation of the College of Biological Sciences Building supports the University of Minnesota’s academic mission, as well as improves the student experience through increased hands-on learning. The design transforms existing underutilized spaces into new, open-plan research labs and offices for student research teams.

A unique project feature is the new Active Learning Lab, which advances the University’s goal to give students a real research experience. In this lab, there is no dedicated lab time or topic. Students work in groups to generate their own research question/topic (derived from specified categories), and then the student teams perform the research. Since the groups utilize the lab whenever they need to do their work, the lab is very flexible to meet the diverse needs of many different types of research projects.