New Lab Science Commons
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Photographs of the Construction Site
The picture below was taken on November 19, 2020
The picture below was taken on July 13, 2020.
The picture below was taken on February 19, 2020.
The picture below was taken on November 20, 2019.
The picture below was taken on June 11, 2019.
Tennessee Tech broke ground for the new lab science building in the fall of 2017.
The $90 million, 160,000-square-feet facility will be the largest academic building at Tech and the its first LEED certified building, housing the chemistry department, a portion of the biology department and lab space for earth sciences, physics and environmental sciences.
The new building replaces Foster Hall and will be the anchor for a new academic quad located immediately north of the Capital Quad residence halls on the site of a current parking lot.
A team of more than 40 faculty members worked closely with architects Upland Design Group in Crossville and Bauer-Askew Architecture in Nashville on the building design. Together they have incorporated collaborative spaces unlike any that have ever existed at Tech as part of the building’s design, allowing faculty and students to interact and work together in an unprecedented way.
“President Oldham wanted us to be fearless,” Dr. Boles (chemistry chair) said. “He wanted to be forward-thinking. He wanted us to design something better, something bigger, something ready for tomorrow that not only fostered and supported growth in enrollment but professional growth in faculty, staff and students.”
Design features focus on collaborative space, active learning and “Science on Display,” which is the appropriate use of glass in a building so that people can see what goes on.
“This building can best be described in the experiences that it will make possible,” said Department of Biology Chair Rob Kissell. “Those experiences are going to be transformative experiences, they are going to be enhanced experiences and they are going to be collaborative experiences. The new building will be transformative on campus on many levels.”
