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College of Life Sciences

By the Numbers: BYU Life Sciences Building

The Life Sciences Building was designed to meet the needs of modern life-science teaching and research with the flexibility to adapt to changing needs in the future

The building features large common areas with white boards, tables, chairs, and benches to foster interaction among students and between students and faculty. Three of the floors have accessible outdoor gathering spaces with dramatic views of the valley.

Scores of plants (all of which are used for teaching) join paintings of living things throughout the atrium and public spaces, and the celebration of life extends into the green space west of the building, a living teaching-and-learning laboratory with instructional gardens, the south campus trail, a waterfall, and the botany pond.

Building Space

  • 265,000 square feet of interior space
  • 105 faculty offices, plus administrative offices
  • 81 teaching/research laboratories
  • 22 teaching laboratories
  • 9 conference rooms
  • 3 auditorium classrooms
  • 3 large computer laboratories
  • 1 large student services facility
  • 240 stalls in the parking garage

Building Materials

  • 35,436 cubic yards of rebar-reinforced concrete
  • 362,953 bricks
  • 35,000 stone floor tiles in main hallways
  • 175 miles of wire
  • 30 miles of pipe

Seismic Stabilizing

  • 2,700 two-foot-diameter holes, dug 40 feet deep
  • 32,000 tons of stone gravel pressure injected to create reinforcing stone columns

College of Life Sciences

  • 147 faculty members
  • 48 staff and administrative personnel
  • more than 5,200 students major in Life Sciences
  • Five of the college’s seven departments are housed in this building: Biology, Health Science, Microbiology and Molecular Biology, Physiology and Developmental Biology, and Plant and Wildlife Sciences.

Multi-Use Building

  • The building is also home to one LDS stake and 15 wards, with three wards holding all of their Sunday meetings in the building.

Building Design

  • Building Designer: Architectural Nexus, Salt Lake City
  • General Contractor: Okland Construction, Salt Lake City

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Originally published by BYU News