Festivities Mark Official Opening of CARE/Crawley Building

CINCINNATI--The University of Cincinnati (UC) is ushering in a new era of discovery with the grand opening of the Center for Academic and Research Excellence (CARE)/Crawley Building, an architecturally distinct landmark on the medical campus.

The new building at the corner of Eden Avenue and Albert Sabin Way, featuring a nine-story glass atrium connecting it to the Medical Sciences Building, will provide almost 240,000 square feet of additional space on the medical campus for research and teaching. In addition, it is the new home of the health sciences library.

The official opening ceremony will be held Wednesday, Sept. 10, in the atrium from 1 to 3 p.m. The event, free and open to the public, will include remarks by David Stern, MD, dean of the College of Medicine and vice president for health affairs, and lead designer Erik Sueberkrop of San Francisco-based STUDIOS Architecture. Sueberkrop, a UC alumnus, won the Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Award for the building design in 2002. Maps will be available for self-guided tours.

“This is a building filled with possibilities,” says Stern. “It will serve as a highly visible gateway to the Academic Health Center and house some of the most technically advanced laboratory research and teaching space in the nation.”

Medical college students returned to classes in August and have been getting the feel of the new building, particularly the shared spaces designed to encourage interactivity and a sense of collegial community—a major goal of the UC|21 strategic plan. Graduate students, faculty and researchers will work in state-of-the-art laboratories with a high degree of flexibility designed in so that all labs can easily adapt to new science and technology for years to come.

Breakout areas for student interaction are plentiful, and study huts located just outside the computer lab are designed to create quiet space that is still part of the daily bustle of the building. The bookstore is just off the atrium, and a fitness center is scheduled to open in November.

“I really appreciate all the study areas they have in here and places to sit,” says first-year medical student Emily Stover. "It says a lot about what UC’s trying to do.”

Construction began in June 2004 on the CARE/Crawley Building, part of a five-phase renovation of the Medical Sciences Building complex. The cost of the project, including Phase I MSB renovations and landscaping for Eden Quad, is $205 million.

The building was designed to achieve a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver Rating from the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization committed to sustainable building practices. “Self cooling” features include the use of reflective materials for roofing to minimize heat absorption. Nearly 98 percent of construction-related waste was recycled, and rainwater is collected underground and used for irrigation.

The building’s namesake, Edith J. Crawley, was a UC graduate who was successfully treated for vision problems at the University. Upon her death in 2003 at age 92, the sale of land holdings in Indiana supported her bequest of $12 million. The Edith J. Crawley Vision Science Research Laboratory is named in her honor.

The health sciences library, moving from the MSB, has been renamed the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library in honor of Donald Harrison, MD, senior vice president and provost for health affairs from 1986-2002. Additionally, the Center for the History of the Health Professions is a medical archive, library and exhibit facility which examines Cincinnati’s rich medical history.