Lab Renovations to Meet the Needs of Today's Students

With the consistent popularity of Creighton University’s undergraduate sciences programs and degrees, the school needed to upgrade the labs in the Rigge Science Building to meet the needs of today’s students and the subjects they’re learning. HDR, in designing the first phase of a four-phase renovation, was tasked with updating 8,000 square feet of physics department space on the basement floor.

The renovated space enhances the learning experience and is intended to help with the recruiting and retention of students and faculty. Three existing labs were converted to four, resulting in three physics labs and one astronomy lab.

To allow for much needed seating and collaboration areas on the floor, wooden benches were carved into the walls of the corridor to create niches and warm up the space. In labs, along with modern equipment and sleek furnishings, acoustical ceiling tiles were retained but slots were introduced so students could have access to the structure above to hang materials such as bowling balls for experiments.

One major requirement of design for all phases was that each floor’s theme fits its department. To develop a theme around physics our team and the department faculty collaborated in envisioning a graphic of the Hadron Collider in Switzerland, and our designers wrapped it on the opaque and transparent surfaces on the lab side of the corridor.