Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

HGA Completes STEM Building at Lehigh University

  • By Matt Jones
  • 10/13/22

Design firm HGA recently finished construction on a new STEM-oriented building for Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn. The Health | Science | Technology (HST) building is located in the northeast corner of campus and plays home to the university’s new College of Health, according to a press release. It will offer research space for public health, supports chemistry, materials science and biological science, among other subjects.

Lehigh University Health | Science | Technology Building
Photos courtesy of HGA

The five-story building offers amenities like open laboratories that can accommodate increasing and decreasing research groups. Open lab zones include wet programming for Energy & Batteries, Functional Materials & Devices, the BioHealth Initiative, and the College of Health, the news release reports. It also features shared meeting spaces, integrated work spaces, and several open areas designed to foster collaboration across disciplines and among undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff alike.

The building covers 189,000 square feet and offers easily reconfigurable workspaces, including the ability to move tables with overhead gas lines. Faculty offices are clustered together in an open office plan to create loosely defined boundaries while still allowing for collaboration.

Lehigh University Health | Science | Technology Building

Sustainability initiatives include a building sunscreen mounted along the building’s south façade to maximize natural light and visibility while minimizing glare. The building is also targeting a LEED v4 Gold Certification with an emphasis on energy and water efficiency. “The building employs numerous energy conservation measures, including an improved building envelope, chilled beams, natural-temperature supply air design, heat shift chillers, high efficiency condensing boilers, and ample natural light,” according to the news release.

Lehigh University Health | Science | Technology Building

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Florida District Completes Construction on New Leadership Institute

    Pinellas County Schools near Tampa, Fla., recently announced that construction is complete on the new Dr. Michael A. Grego Leadership Institute, according to a news release. The district partnered with Rowe Architects for the project’s design and with Skanska for construction services.

  • Designing for Every Mind

    Learning environments have the power to shape not just what students know, but who they become. When a school is designed with genuine empathy—for the full range of ways students think, sense, and engage with the world—it becomes more than a building. It becomes a catalyst for growth, confidence, and belonging. That is the animating idea behind neurodiverse design, and it is one that is transforming how more architects and designers are thinking about school design.

  • Architectural Power for the Modern Campus Landscape

    For generations, an outdoor classroom only required a textbook and a patch of grass. Today, not only has the laptop replaced the printed pages, the rise of agile learning has turned campuses into study halls with students listening to lectures and researching topics from quads, gardens, and plazas. The challenge for architects and facility managers is to provide connectivity without cluttering the landscape with visual eyesores or creating safety hazards with extension cords.

  • Moline-Coal Valley School District to Consolidate Two Schools into New Facility

    The Moline-Coal Valley School District in Moline, Ill., recently broke ground on a new elementary school that will consolidate the students and staff from two existing schools, according to local news. Robert Ontiveros Elementary School will serve as the new home for Lincoln-Irving Elementary School and Willard Elementary School.