The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s 163,400-square-foot Chemistry Building replaces a 50-year-old facility with a new environment designed to bring teaching, research, and student collaboration closer together. Designed by CannonDesign and Kahler Slater, the building combines advanced teaching and research laboratories with lecture halls, study areas, and informal gathering spaces. Glass walls put science on display throughout the facility, while laboratories are interspersed with breakout spaces that give students and faculty more opportunities to connect outside traditional classrooms.

In this video, CannonDesign returns to the building after it had been occupied for about a year to see how those ideas are working in practice. Students and faculty discuss their experiences in a facility designed around different ways of learning, collaborating, and conducting research. The project also offers a closer look at an emerging approach to higher education STEM facilities—one that treats circulation and gathering areas as part of the learning environment rather than simply space between laboratories and classrooms.