“As you increase your funding volume, you generate more facilities and administration fees, and we have been allocating a portion of those dollars to university facilities to support our research,” says Corinne Lengsfeld, DU’s senior vice provost for research and graduate education.

“The College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics has grown substantially over the last decade and a half, which has generated pressure on our infrastructure, and [a new] building is needed to keep up with the pace,” Lengsfeld adds. “They needed more square feet and better wet labs to support molecular life sciences.”

Workspaces for researchers will be right outside the laboratories, allowing for more efficient workflows.
Image courtesy Anderson Mason Dale

Now under construction, the 73,000-sq-ft Integrative Life Sciences Center will help fill the void. Budgeted at $112 million, the five-story building will feature three undergraduate teaching laboratories on the ground floor below four stories of flexible research space when it opens in 2027.

The concept for the building grew from a comprehensive master plan that was developed in 2018 and updated in 2024. “We narrowed in on projects that would be achievable within a reasonable time period, say a five-year window, and from there, this science building floated to the top,” explains Allan Wilson, DU’s associate vice chancellor for facilities management and planning.

The Greenwood Village, Colo., office of Holder Construction is the construction manager/general contractor on the project, working from a design by Anderson Mason Dale Architects of Denver. Holder won the job after starting off as the project’s construction manager adviser; it’s the firm’s first project on campus and Anderson Mason Dale’s seventh.

“We actually put a firewall between the preconstruction services and the GMP negotiation,” Wilson says. “[Holder] won it because of the work they did in preconstruction, and it made sense for them to win it, but we left the door open.”

Tom Dobson, senior vice president at Holder, says the firm’s experience with data centers, airports and other technical projects opened the door to the job. Holder’s work as general contractor of the Interdisciplinary STEM Research Building 1 at University of Georgia led to an introduction to Wilson at DU. “It was the right timing with the right style of project and the right people,” Dobson says. “[Wilson] laid out their master plan for the area, and the personalities just started to click. These buildings are more complex than normal, and it takes a lot of teamwork.”

Construction began in June 2025 with about four months of “getting the utilities moved out of a channel that ran right directly through the site,” says Dobson. “All of the fiber and the sewer lines had to get moved.”

With an average daily crew of about 130 workers, the building topped out in February, about two months ahead of schedule. The structure consists of mild reinforced concrete without post tensioning, and the average slab is 14 in. thick to minimize vibration.

One of the project’s biggest challenges has been choreographing the build-out of the MEP systems, which represent about half of the budget.
Image courtesy Holder Construction

Science on Display

Andy Nielsen, principal at Anderson Mason Dale, says DU’s science buildings have traditionally been “introverted,” but the Integrative Life Sciences Center will buck that trend with glass walls inside and out.

“There is a lot of transparency that you haven’t necessarily seen on a lot of the buildings on the campus,” Nielsen says. “There’s this whole idea now of ‘science on display’ and opening up, not only for the researchers within to look out and see views outside, but also to let people from outside see into the building.”

Campus tours have historically avoided DU’s science buildings, but that is slated to change after construction concludes next year. Lengsfeld says the impetus for the labs’ visibility is to “demystify the research experience” for undergraduates and prospective students alike.

Employing a similarly transparent design, the research labs on the second through fourth levels are designed to be flexible over time. “There are no real walls between the spaces,” adds Micah Scott, senior project manager with Holder. “Being able to take a piece of metal casework and move it from here to there is a lot easier than renovating a lab.”

There’s also a functional angle in the design in that it allows researchers to take a break or have lunch within view of their laboratory. “You can’t eat a sandwich at your desk in the lab while you’re doing an experiment,” says Nielsen. “What we have is a very transparent separation … so they can see what’s going on and what other people are doing in the lab.”

An event-friendly pavilion will connect the new building with the existing Seeley G. Mudd Science Building.
Photo courtesy Holder Construction

Massive MEP

With a LEED Gold target, the project is marked by notably complex MEP systems that represent almost 50% of the overall construction cost. The labs will have between six and 12 air changes per hour, with a separate mechanical system from the one in the public spaces. “Getting the building sealed in order that the individual rooms can be positive or negative, however they’re designed, is a big deal,” says Dobson, noting that it impacts the process of passing ducting through drywall. “You’ve got to put the drywall up, then cut a hole and run through the drywall. The sequence of all of that to make the building sealed is detailed and precise.”

“If the drywall had not been hung first, you’d never be able to get back up there and seal it off,” adds Scott. “The tolerances are so small in this scenario, you’ve got to have everybody involved.”

Dobson credits mechanical contractor Trautman & Shreve and electrical contractor Intermountain Electric for their work on the project as well as Holder’s MEP crew. “We have a dedicated mechanical, electrical and plumbing department of over 100 people that do nothing but that,” he says. “That’s what makes these projects successful.”

The installation of pumps, chillers, boilers and heat exchangers on the rooftop mechanical penthouse in March was a major milestone, Dobson says. “All of the major mechanical and electrical equipment that goes on the roof just got set, so now we can start seeing our way downhill to the finish line.”

The building topped out in February and is slated for completion in spring 2027.
Photo courtesy Holder Construction

Connecting Old and New

The Integrative Life Sciences Center will connect to the 1980s-era Seeley G. Mudd Science Building via a new covered pavilion. After the new building is completed in spring 2027, Holder will turn its attention to renovations on the Mudd building as well as nearby Boettcher West to modernize existing lab spaces.

The new building “resets the lab spaces overall and then allows us to free up square feet in Seeley Mudd and renovate that building and do things that will allow us to grow in that space in the future,” says Wilson.

During preconstruction tours of universities in Massachusetts, representatives from DU and Holder gained insights from a new lab at Tufts University. “Tufts had taken two old buildings and smushed them together with a third new one and a plaza in between,” says Lengsfeld. “Every nook and cranny was utilized. They didn’t waste a dime on that building.”

That catalyzed an epiphany: Instead of an independent building to replace the old one, the concept of connecting old and new allowed DU “to maximize our dollars and get the fastest, coolest return on investment for both the scientists and the students,” she notes. “It just completely changed our view of what we should be doing and why we should be doing it.”

The connecting pavilion will feature a mass timber atrium with glulam (glued laminated timber) beams, a light-filtering “Flower of Life” architectural feature on the wall and an event-friendly layout.

Lengsfeld says the pavilion and other gathering spaces throughout the building are a means to an end. “It really spawns collaboration. I think there will be a very rapid outgrowth of ideas in the first 18 months that we will capitalize on for years,” she adds.