FSU Completes New Life Sciences Building

NovemberDecember 2008
Industry News

Florida State University Completes New Life Sciences Building

The latest addition to Florida State University’s (Tallahassee, Fla.) Jacobean Revival-style campus architecture is the James E. “Jim” King Jr. Building, a LEED-registered Life Sciences facility, which was completed in June. The building is part of the university’s new science quadrangle, home to the College of Medicine and Department of Psychology.

The $55-million, 180-square-foot facility was designed by the team of Tallahassee-based Elliot Marshall Innes, P.A. (EMI) and the Atlanta office of Lord, Aeck & Sargent. The building features a green roof landscaped plaza, a special terrazzo floor in the lobby, low water demanding plant life, a large courtyard and more.

“We felt that the building should be a confident reinterpretation of the traditional buildings on campus. Familiar building elements representative of an earlier era were combined in a contemporary and novel manner,” said EMI Design Principal Brad Innes. “A conscious effort was made to stitch the imagery of the building back to what the university wanted without it becoming a literal copy of the early 20th century buildings on campus.”

In addition, Innes said, “It was important that the researchers have a light, airy and transparent environment with open relationships to the outside, so to address this we broke the building into two, five-story wings joined by a two-story central lobby, and we used lots of glass with the required red brick and precast stone.” MD