Leaders of Johns Hopkins University unveiled preliminary designs on Thursday for the newest addition to their East Baltimore campus, a six-story Life Sciences Building that will provide more than 1,200 lab benches for scientists engaged in biomedical research.Proposed for a full city block almost directly across the street from Hopkins’ domed Billings administration building, the Life Sciences Building will bring together experts from five different schools in what Hopkins is calling “a collaborative, technology-driven hub for fundamental, basic biomedical science.”According to The Hub, Hopkins’ in-house publication, the building will contain labs and meeting spaces for Hopkins’ School of Medicine, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Nursing and the Whiting School of Engineering.“We are thrilled to advance our scientists’ vision of creating research infrastructure designed to speed the pace of discovery and foster interdivisional collaboration across the university,” said Johns Hopkins Medicine CEO and dean of the medical faculty Theodore DeWeese, in a statement. “This state-of-the-art facility will help ensure that Johns Hopkins University continues to set the standard of excellence in medical research.”A rendering depicts the proposed Johns Hopkins Life Sciences Building as seen from Monument Street looking southeast. Credit: Payette.Demolition underwayPlans for the new building were presented on Thursday to Baltimore’s Urban Design and Architecture Advisory Panel (UDAAP). The construction site is the southwest corner of East Monument Street and North Broadway, and the building will stretch along Broadway from Monument Street to McElderry Walkway, an east-west pedestrian spine on the medical campus. The next building to the west will be the Armstrong Medical Education Building and the next building to the south will be the Levi Watkins, Jr. M. D. Outpatient Center. Because of the Life Science Building’s location, Hopkins has the ability to connect it to the underground Johns Hopkins station on the Baltimore Metro subway line.Hampton House is one of three buildings targeted for demolition to make way for the Life Sciences Building. Photo by Ed Gunts.To make way for construction, Hopkins is demolishing three buildings currently on that block: the 10-story Hampton House Building at 624 N. Broadway; 14-story Reed Hall at 600 N. Broadway, and the Denton A. Cooley fitness center at 1620 McElderry St. All faculty members and other staffers have been relocated from Reed Hall and Hampton House, temporary space has been identified to house the research and teaching activities that were there and demolition is well underway, with Berg Corporation as the contractor. The Cooley center is scheduled to close on Oct. 11, and a new space for fitness is scheduled to be operational at the end of October.According to a Hopkins spokesperson, departments of the Bloomberg School of Public Health (BSPH) that were located in Hampton House will be moving into a school addition that is currently under construction and scheduled to open in the fall of 2026.The Denton A. Cooley Center is targeted for demolition and will close Oct. 11, 2024. Photo by Ed Gunts.Payette, a Boston-based firm with a long track record of designing laboratories and research facilities, is the architect of the Life Sciences Building, and Olin is the landscape architect.Hopkins’ timetable calls for construction to begin in the summer of 2025 and be complete by the end of 2029. A firm cost estimate has not been released, but the building will be funded through university funds, according to the Hopkins spokesperson.‘A new ecosystem’“The Life Sciences Building will create a new ecosystem for foundational, basic biomedical research centered around rapidly developing technologies in areas such as imaging, artificial intelligence, and genetics, which are helping scientists make discoveries at a record-breaking pace,” The Hub reported this week.Reed Hall is being demolished to make way for the Life Sciences Building. Photo by Ed Gunts.With about 500,000 gross square feet of space and six levels of labs and meeting space, the Life Sciences Building “will be a hub for six newly developed ‘scientific neighborhoods’ that connect scientists in similar fields and five ‘technology hubs’ that help scientists maximize the potential of new scientific technologies to advance biomedical research,” The Hub continued. “The neighborhoods and hubs, designed and led by Johns Hopkins scientists, will take shape alongside construction of the building.”The building is being designed to contain a “flexible mix” of laboratory space, with about 60 percent of the lab space dedicated to experimental approaches and 40 percent of the lab space for scientists focused on computation. Planners say the 1,200 lab benches will provide space for 920 scientists working in biomedical research. The building will also be home for hundreds of graduate students pursuing biomedical research.According to The Hub, “basic research is at the root of all advances in modern medicine,” from analyzing how molecules interact to drive biology to the development of gene therapies and treatments for human disease.Recent basic science discoveries at Johns Hopkins include: an analysis of heart tissue sent to space; a search for new biological targets for treating breast cancer; surprise findings from bacteria in freshwater lakes and soil that hint at better antibiotics; a discovery of a molecular pathway disrupted by UV radiation; and using super-chilled brain cells to determine how an epilepsy drug works.A design departureIn contrast to the historic brick buildings on the east side of Broadway – Marburg, Billings and Wilmer — the Life Sciences Building will have a glass and metal skin, with copper- and bronze-colored walls that curve in certain places to mark entrances and a series of landscaped terraces both on the ground and on upper levels of the building.The design continues a trend in which Hopkins has been opening up its newer campus buildings to the street rather than walling them off like fortresses. Plans include conference rooms and a glass-walled caféteria on the first floor, overlooking Broadway.During the UDAAP presentation, panel members reactively positively to the design approach.“Wow, what a transformative project,” said panel chair Pavlina Ilieva. “I think it’s a really strong, recognizable, cohesive approach to the site. It’s exciting because it is a departure from the other things that are on the campus, from the very historic and traditional buildings to some of the now 30-, 40-year-old buildings and even some of the newer things that we have seen. It’s really great to see that ability to bring something fresh and new, try to integrate it and tie it in some visual ways to at least the color and material language around, but really not hesitate to bring new forms and new types of architecture to the campus, so kudos for that. I think it’s a very strong proposal.”A site plan shows the proposed Johns Hopkins Life Sciences Building. Credit: Payette/Olin.Ilieva was especially impressed by the way the Life Sciences Building has been designed to open up to the street, just as two other recent campus buildings have been designed to do farther east along the Monument Street corridor.“It’s really great to see the institution’s commitment tofollow through on that with all of the future projects,” she said. “I think it’s really starting to transform this campus and this whole environment to something completely different and really looking into the future…It’s refreshing to see.”The extensive amount of landscaping “almost [creates] a park system” that the building nestles into, noted Sharon Bradley, the landscape architect on the review panel. The terraced hillside along Monument Street results in “a biophilic, park-like experience even on a busy street,” she said.In general, “there are a lot of opportunities [for the researchers] to be outside, in a lot of different ways,” Bradley said, with low walls, planter walls and café tables providing “intentional, definite places for people to pause outside and appreciate the natural setting.”“I think it’s a wonderful project,” said panel member Osborne Anthony. “There’s a certain amount of care and I would even say exploration that has gone into the design, so I think in that regard it’s successful.”Anthony said he sees the building’s curving form as a welcome relief to some of the more “orderly and orthodox” institutional buildings on campus.“I think what’s welcoming about this one is it takes on a kind of an organic framework to it and in many respects, it’s almost like a welcome counterpoint to what’s in the building when you think about it,” he told the design team, led by Payette Senior Associate Wesley Schwartz. “You’re doing research. It’s a life sciences building. There’s a kind of a…rigor that’s associated with that kind of a program. But yet you found the ability to express a little bit more freedom in terms of its massing and…the elegance of the landscaping…It really begins to mediate between the very challenging site, in terms of the grades dropping off…You’ve been able to really work through that in a very crafty and clever manner.”