By the Numbers: BYU Life Sciences Building - BYU News Skip to main content
Intellect

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
BYU Life Sciences Building
Photo by BYU Photo

Related Articles

data-content-type="article"

BYU’s world-class pipe organ is the ‘crown jewel’ of the new Concert Hall

March 06, 2025
If you haven’t experienced the pipe organ in the BYU Music Building yet, you’re in for a treat. With 4,613 pipes and 81 ranks (sets of pipes), it’s the third largest organ in Utah and the only one with two consoles. Organists can play from a console located in the center of the pipework facade or from a movable stage console.
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=
data-content-type="article"

BYU study analyzes distant Kuiper Belt object with NASA's Hubble data

March 04, 2025
The researchers identify a possible rare triple system in the Kuiper Belt
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=
data-content-type="article"

Forum: Why institutions matter

February 25, 2025
“The answer comes down to each of us — even to you, as students here in this university,” expressed Yuval Levin in his forum address at the BYU Marriott Center.
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText=