Rice begins construction of Collaborative Research Center

CONTACT: B.J. Almond
PHONE: (713) 348-6770
E-MAIL: balmond@rice.edu

Rice University began construction this week for a 477,000-gross-square-foot, 10-story Collaborative Research Center (CRC) at the corner of Main and University.

The new facility will enable researchers and physicians from the world’s largest medical center to team up with Rice University scientists and engineers on bioscience and biotechnology research and complement one another’s capabilities.

Texas Medical Center (TMC) institutions participating in the CRC include Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Texas Children’s Hospital and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Discussions are also under way with other potential participants, including such international collaborators as Mexico’s Tecnologico de Monterrey.

Approved unanimously by the Rice Board of Trustees Dec. 14, the CRC plans call for eight floors of efficient research laboratories in a tower atop a base platform that will include a vivarium, a 280-seat auditorium, a 100-seat seminar room, classrooms, 10,000 square feet of retail space for a restaurant and shops, and other common space, as well as three levels of underground parking. The baseline plan also includes two stories of shell space to allow easy and rapid expansion as the project grows, along with the potential to add a second research tower atop the base platform that could add up to another 150,000 gross square feet. The building will be constructed on 2.9 acres of land owned by Rice, with occupancy scheduled for early 2009.

”The Collaborative Research Center is essential to achieving Rice’s Vision for the Second Century and assuring its position as a great research university,” Rice President David W. Leebron said. ”Rice and the Texas Medical Center are committed to increasing their collaborative efforts and combining their complementary expertise to find pathbreaking solutions to today’s health-care issues. This combination of the TMC research institutions and Rice has the capacity to be one of the most powerful biomedical research efforts in the world, and this extraordinary research facility represents a major investment toward that goal. It will reap benefits for health care and for the city of Houston for decades to come.”

Although patients will not be treated at the CRC, they will benefit from new treatments developed in research that will help transform the future of health care. For example, nanobiotechnology is expected to be used increasingly to design noninvasive treatments for diseases that now require surgery.

 ”University-based applied science and engineering has taken on a more important role in the translational biomedical research that leads to important new clinical applications,” Rice Provost Eugene Levy said. ”Bioengineering, computational biology, imaging, and other areas of engineering – none of which are traditional strengths in research hospitals and medical schools – are playing much more critical roles in biomedical research. Progress and leadership in biomedicine and biotechnology will depend on increasingly close interplay between these university-based sciences, including nanotechnology, and traditional areas of modern biomedical science.” The collaborative effort will also facilitate the sharing of expensive hi-tech equipment that institutions could not afford individually.

Jim Crownover, chair of Rice’s Board of Trustees, noted that the CRC’s leadership role in biomedicine and biotechnology will provide important benefits to the Houston economy also. ”Biotechnology is expected to be the No. 1 industry for job growth in Houston, targeting 30,000 new jobs over the next five years,” he said.

Although the CRC will be the largest academic building in Rice’s history, construction is on a ”hyper-track” schedule, according to project manager Kathy Jones. ”In addition to allowing us to bring the building into operation more quickly so that the important research can get under way, this approach will save on construction costs by shortening the overall duration of the project,” she said. The CRC will be constructed to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Rice plans to relocate the Department of Bioengineering to the CRC, along with selected research groups from other departments.

The 10 stories above ground along Main Street will attach to a hub on the west side that handles air circulation and provides meeting space for social collaboration; the hub includes provisions for a second tower parallel to the first for a future phase two of construction.

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill is the executive and design architect, with a team led by principal design architect Craig Hartmann. The building will be constructed by Linbeck. FKP Architects is the local associate architect.

For more information, visit <collaborativeresearchcenter.org>.