The project involved a site-planning phase in which the parti of a pair of laboratory buildings facing each other across a campus quad was developed and two subsequent phases in which the companion buildings were designed and built. Ronald Evitts was involved in all phases, primarily as project architect and project manager on the Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Medical Research Laboratories, the first of the buildings to be completed. Both buildings are "decorated sheds:" generic loft space promoting maximum flexibility, with architecturally embellished facades relating to the campus context. Academic/convivial interaction is promoted via day-lit meeting spaces along and off of the main corridors, and the exterior site development facilitates efficient movement through it as well as providing pleasant gathering and meeting places. The vocabulary and materials of the facades are derived from both the immediate Medical school context, and the more remote but more animated original complex of buildings built in a Lombardian Romanesque style.