University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Biomedical Science Tower III

Location

Pittsburgh, PA / United States

Completed

2005

Total Square Footage

330,000 GSF

PROGRAM COMPONENTS

Bioengineering, Cell Biology, Computational Biology, Developmental Biology, Drug Discovery, Human Genetics, Integrative Biology, Molecular Biology, Disease, Neuroscience, Regenerative Medicine, Structural Biology, Translational Vaccine Development, ABSL-3, Animal Facility, Drug Discovery Research, Magnet/Imaging Center, Regional Biocontainment Laboratory

This 330,000 square foot, 11-story tower serves as the research community’s new front door on Fifth Avenue, a prominent street in downtown Pittsburgh. Within the building’s "Gemini" floor plan, twin bars of modular laboratories run parallel and adjacent to each other. Circulation cores, office clusters, break areas and conference rooms occupy the building’s east and west ends. These functional zones define the building’s four exterior layers and modulate the massing of this very large building.

The building’s vertical organization reflects the metaphor "idea percolation." Research begins on the lower levels in structural biology. Then drugs are modeled and tested in computational biology, neurocognition, bioengineering, genomics and proteomics on the middle floors. Upper floors provide space for drug discovery, the last stage before clinical trials.