A building that’s all about the people

The exterior of the Health Sciences Education Center at the University of Minnesota (Photo courtesy Peter Sieger)

The Health Sciences Education Center (HSEC) at the University of Minnesota opened in Summer 2020. At over 150,000-SF of new construction and another 50,000-SF of renovation in the adjacent Phillips Wangensteen Building , it is a massive project that will have a major impact on the connectedness and education of future doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other health professionals on the Twin Cities campus. 

HSEC provides an Inter-Professional Hub for the multitude of Health Science disciplines – boasting state of the art instructional spaces that support active learning and immersive learning environments, including a full continuum of care Simulation Center and a dedicated Virtual Reality Studio.

A fully re-imagined Library spans multiple floors and is a destination for accessing support for rapid proto-typing, data visualization, and media production, as well as books, manuscripts, and artifacts, a collection within the Health Sciences Library.

There is a lot packed into this project and the planning and design of such diverse space types brought the right challenges to make architecture fun and fulfilling.  The reward of this effort was contributing to something greater than myself.  

Read more via the online article at ArchiType

This article was published in the October 2020 AIA Connecticut ArchiType

Karen Parzych, AIA