UH life sciences site to sprout

As the University of Hawaii works to modernize buildings on the aging Manoa campus, officials want to move away from static learning and research spaces toward facilities that foster collaboration across fields.

Most of the buildings on the 105-year-old campus have long been associated with individual schools and departments. But as programs evolve and expand, the university is looking to a planned $50 million state-of-the-art life sciences building to boost interdisciplinary collaboration.

The 45,000-square-foot facility will provide new teaching and research space for departments of the College of Natural Sciences, including biology, microbiology and botany, along with the Pacific Biosciences Research Center under the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. But the facility, which is expected to serve 1,000 students weekly and house 23 faculty and 60 graduate students, will also welcome experts in other fields.

“Biology used to be many splintered divisions of different groups that grew up independently, like zoology and botany, microbiology. Biology is more fragmented than any other science,” said Aloysius “Loek” Helminck, dean of Manoa’s College of Natural Sciences.

“What we hope to do in this building is to create an integrated life sciences program, where ‘integrated’ means we are also going to use other disciplines like biochemistry or biophysics or biomathematics,” said Helminck, who has been helping with the planning for the facility. “We are trying to create a totally interdisciplinary space. We’ll have a lot of flexible spaces and labs so if biology takes a different direction, then we will be able to adapt.”

Jan Gouveia, UH’s vice president for administration, who oversees capital improvements, said the approach requires a shift in thinking.

“The whole approach to how we’re addressing our facilities is a different set of tenets — it’s a completely different philosophical approach to the role of what the facility is,” Gouveia said.

“It used to just be four walls and a roof to keep us dry in the rain, a place where people could park themselves,” she added. “Now it’s not just a facility, but a vehicle for really delivering and bringing to this state and our students all the cutting-edge research and academia. Appreciating the activities and the programs that are actually going to be occurring in that space is really where the inspiration is.”

Professor Margaret McFall-Ngai, director of the Pacific Biosciences Research Center, whose researchers will collaborate in the new building, said the future of biology is about “not staying within the boundaries and silos of departments.”

“Hawaii has so much to give the world. We have an opportunity to help fashion the way things will be in the future environmentally,” said McFall-Ngai, an expert on the role of beneficial bacteria in animal health and disease. “I think that this building is a great first step in getting us into a position where we can really be contributors to the world’s next steps in addressing environmental issues.”

She added, “Hawaii offers a perfect environment and a perfect situation for us to be leaders in biosciences because we find ourselves in a completely unique environment. Hawaii is the most diverse set of environments on the planet.” While Brazil, home to the Amazon, has far more land area than the islands, it has fewer than half of the biomes (plants and animals that occupy a distinct region) Hawaii has, she said.

Construction of the new Life Sciences Building will involve a bit of musical chairs for faculty and students.

Henke Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, will be demolished this summer. The building, which sits along East-West Road adjacent to Hamilton Library, at one time housed the School of Social Work. It’s now nearly half empty, with a few miscellaneous offices in use.

The science building will be built on the Henke site. Construction is expected to begin this fall, with completion estimated in spring 2019.

UH awarded a $49.5 million design-build contract to Layton Construction Co. LLC with design consultant G70 to cover that work. “Design-build” means a single contractor is handling both design and construction at a fixed, upfront cost, versus the design-bid-build method, by which planning and design are handled by one contractor and construction is handled by another in separate phases.

After faculty and students relocate to the new facility, the next phase of the project will involve taking down the aging Snyder Hall, which houses the Microbiology Department.

Demolishing Henke and Snyder is expected to eliminate $19 million worth of deferred maintenance from the university’s repair backlog.