Rhode Island College Fogarty Life Science Building

Rhode Island College Fogarty Life Science Building Feasibility Study

Rhode Island College (RIC) hired SMMA to lead a comprehensive feasibility study for the Fogarty Life Science Building, a key, campus science hub that houses the biology, biotechnology, and chemistry labs and classrooms as well as the Zvart Onanian School of Nursing.

Built in 1975, Fogarty Hall has served RIC well and undergone several lab renovations. Despite this, the building was in need of a holistic comprehensive analysis and planning study to improve the sense of arrival and align with the educational demands of today and the future. The result is a transformative plan for an addition-renovation that greatly expands RIC’s teaching and research potential. The plan includes flexible teaching labs that foster a more collaborative and transparent learning environment for students and faculty.

Fogarty’s interior will be transformed from a cellular program into an open and connected building.

This will create visibility into the core activities of the program, provide informal places for students to connect, and improve the building’s wayfinding and sense of place.

The new design transforms an outdated learning environment. The 1975 design featured an internal facing “racetrack” corridor lined by offices. The windowless teaching and collaboration spaces left students and faculty feeling disconnected to both the outside world and to learning happening elsewhere in the building. Students found it hard to collaborate with peers and interact with faculty—two basic expectations in modern higher ed environments.

By contrast, the proposed design creates communal spaces to transform an inward-looking facility into a vibrant and interconnected part of the academic campus.

By reorganizing the program, the new design embraces natural daylight, putting modern learning on display. New teaching spaces improve interdisciplinary collaboration and team-based learning. By expanding the teaching lab footprint, the College will be able to align with peer space standards and increase utilization and flexibility within labs.

The “sandbox” for testing new ideas and teaching methods.

The proposed addition creates a new “front door” for Fogarty.

Located at the end point of several campus pathways, the addition will create a sense of arrival to the building that the previous design lacked.

The addition will engage the campus on a pedestrian level, connecting Fogarty to its surroundings while greatly improving the building’s thermal performance in line with RIC’s wider sustainability goals.