Penn Health System officials announced plans in June for a 10-story research tower, with hopes that the new facility will raise the bar for regional biomedical research.
Located next to the $232 million Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine on Civic Center Boulevard, the new $370 million biomedical research facility is scheduled for completion by the summer of 2010, Penn Medicine spokesman Marc Kaplan said.
In addition to providing more resources for research into human diseases, the tower will also facilitate work between clinical staff and biomedical scientists.
Health System spokeswoman Susan Phillips said work on the tower is still in the planning stages as officials try to ensure that it will meet the needs of research staff.
"Some scientists' labs need certain facilities, and if the building doesn't have those facilities, scientists won't want to work there," she said.
The new research tower will address "the need for new clinical and research space, [which] was identified in our five-year strategic plan," Phillips added.
Penn President Amy Gutmann said in a press release that the building would "accelerate Penn Medicine's innovative research enterprise" by bringing "together the rich and complex biomedical disciplines required to achieve progress in the conquest of disease."
The new facility will also focus on translational research, which tries to connect medical observations made by clinical staff with biomedical research by scientists.
While the project will mean additional construction work in the Civic Center Boulevard area, Phillips said the impact on staff and students would be minimal.
"This will be a continuation of the construction work that is already under way for both the Perelman Center and for the Roberts Proton Therapy Center," she said.
Rafael Vinoly Architects PC of New York, the firm working on the Perelman Center, will design the biomedical tower, which will feature central plazas and atriums to facilitate collaboration between clinicians and research scientists, Philips said.
