The 200,000-sf, LEED Gold certified Couch Biomedical Research Building is located on open space (surface parking and landscaped areas) at Washington University. In years past, this was a residential neighborhood with small single family masonry residences that have been razed leaving buried subsurface rubble.

The facility replaces older, less efficient research space with new, highly flexible space to accommodate new research teams and interdisciplinary research, plus BSL-2 laboratories for all disciplines and genotyping laboratories. It houses the Department of Genetics, the Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology, the Department of Medicine and the Department of Developmental Biology.

The six-story building has a basement and penthouse for mechanical space. The remainder of the building is designed and fit out for research labs and associated lab support functions.

The building is projected to be 35 percent better than ASHRAE 90.1, using 126 kBTU/sq ft. Energy modeling to date indicates actual building operation to be less than 103 kBTU/sq. ft. per year.