Washington University School of Medicine

Neuroscience Research Building and Parking Garage

St. Louis, MO

The Washington University School of Medicine’s new Neuroscience Research Facility houses neurosciences, neurology, psychiatry, vivarium, and specialty animal research including laboratories and research spaces, offices, meeting and seminar rooms, loading docks, food service, shell space, and other support spaces. Rather than being organized traditionally by department, the new facility is uniquely organized by research themes to foster collaboration across departments to achieve shared scientific goals and accomplish specific research objectives. Project delivery was organized into two design and construction teams with one team focused on the research building (design-bid-build) and the other focused on the parking garage (design-build). Faith Group was responsible for full design and construction phase services for the telecommunications, networking, security, and audiovisual systems for both projects, along with coordinating seamless integration of the communication and security systems between the projects.

Our team faced significant challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which required extensive coordination for design and construction. The pandemic caused the project to go on hold temporarily and then required work to be done remotely. This unprecedented event created a necessity for the Faith Group team to work remotely with stakeholders, construction partners, and the Owner, as well as lab and research users. Faith Group also overcame challenges to design core and shell spaces to support future lab and research programs, which required simultaneously constructing and adding lab spaces to fit the needs of future users.

“With this new building, we are able to offer the neuroscience community a central home and a laboratory environment that can inspire entirely new concepts that allow us to grasp a much deeper understanding of the brain and have a global impact on health and science.” – Chancellor Andrew D. Martin, WUSTL.edu, March 6, 2020