The Advanced Research and Innovation in Smart Environments (ARISE) Building is the product of an expansive redevelopment project. Formerly home to the Life Sciences program, ARISE now accommodates pioneering research in Health Technologies, Information and Communications Technologies, Knowledge Integration, and Clean Technologies.

Only the main structural components of the existing two-storey building have been retained and fortified to accommodate a vertical expansion of two and a half stories. New core elements – elevators, shaft stairs and service-based program spaces – are clustered along the North side of the floorplate while a series of research suites occupy the remaining perimeter. Each suite is designed to host perpetually changing research groups working either successively or concurrently. They vary in size and some are more proscribed than others but all comprise a range of space typologies, including offices, meetings rooms and dry labs. Suites feed into and off of a shared east-west axis that serves as a collision space, encouraging formal and informal interactions between research groups. A second axis, known informally as the Gallery, runs north-south across the centre of the floorplate and serves as a shared space for exhibiting ongoing work on each floor.

Operating on a heavily sloped site, the building features a new, at-grade Main Entrance to the fourth floor. The existing ground floor entrance has been retained with sloped landscaping and a new plaza mediating between the upper and lower conditions. The building is newly clad in a combination of stone, ceramic fritted glazed aluminum curtainwall and copper metal panel system. This cost effective, easy to maintain, energy efficient envelope retains a high degree of transparency and engaging views of Rideau River while also offering ARISE a new identity and renewed visibility within the larger campus.