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The Department of Experimental Surgery needed to expand their animal surgery area to meet their research needs. The existing operating rooms were inadequate and under-utilized space on the floor could be put to better use.

Studio Five Architects designed five operating rooms with support spaces, including clean and dirty prep areas, surgeon prep areas, and storage of surgical supplies. The surgeons enter the operating rooms from one side, and the animals enter from a separate corridor system.

Two new animal holding rooms were provided, designed to national laboratory animal care guidelines. The two separate animal holding rooms give the department the flexibility of working with more than one animal species. An animal prep area is located between the animal holding rooms to prepare the animals for surgery.

Security measures are an important element of any animal research facility. Security to the area was improved as a part of the project, by increasing security to the floor, adding video cameras in all corridors and animal holding areas that directly link to the police, and installing 'panic' buttons in strategic locations.

Video capability was incorporated into the project, by providing video cameras in each operating room, so that video images could be recorded and transmitted to the office area, conference room, and other department areas.

The Multi-Axial Subassemblage Testing (MAST) Laboratory is located on the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota, and comprises one node of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). The MAST Laboratory is a national laboratory for researchers who are interested in conducting large-scale testing and simulations on the integrity of structures subjected to earthquakes, wind, and other extreme loadings.

The MAST system specializes in three-dimensional testing of large-scale structural test specimens. The MAST Laboratory includes extensive computational and archiving facilities, and the Laboratory supports interactive remote teleparticipation of experimental research as part of the NEES grid system.

The facility meets highly unusual and complex technical requirements for specialized earthquake engineering testing. A high bay area contains the MAST strong wall and testing bay for the research activities. An adjacent staging area provides space for research experiments to be prepared prior to testing. The control room is highly integrated with cabled connections to the testing bay equipment, and visual connections for the researchers on and off-site observing the tests in process.