North Hennepin Community College's new bioscience and health careers center mixes state-of-the-art laboratories and classrooms with light-filled common spaces for academic interaction and studying

摘要

What we wrote in our Jan/Feb 2015 issue: When a new Science Center opened in 2002 at North Hennepin Community College, it immediately ran full bore, says Elaina Bleifield, the two-year college's dean of Science and Mathematics. "We had classes going from 8 A.M. to 10 P.M.," she says. So planning began for an expansion. After years of waiting for construction money, the Perkins + Will-designed Bioscience and Health Careers Center opened in August 2014, housing nursing and bioscience classrooms, labs, and faculty spaces. Its long, glassy facade stretches along 85th Avenue North, heralding a new era for the formerly inward-looking campus. "The campus is ordered around a courtyard, almost like wagons around a campfire," says senior project architect Paul Neuhaus, AIA. "We wanted to reach out to the community."