The Genetic Medicine Building, which will become one of Carolina’s largest facilities, is one of the latest new project to find the spotlight in Chapel Hill at a time when the pace of an ambitious multi-year construction program is nearing its peak.

The University recently held a ground-breaking ceremony for a $110 million, 330,000 square-foot Genetic Medicine Building that will bring together scientists from two of the university’s outstanding professional schools: medicine and pharmacy. The facility will provide faculty with unique opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. Key projects will include efforts to develop proteomics-based technologies to discover new biological targets for treating diseases and novel approaches to deliver gene therapy.

The seven-story structure will contain five laboratory floors and will house researchers from pharmacy and three medical school departments: pharmacology, genetics, and biochemistry and biophysics.

Designed by the architectural firm of Lord, Aeck and Sargent, all laboratories will feature flexible open design to encourage cooperation and allow easy modification when needed. This approach emerged from the successful concept applied to the recently opened Biomolecular Research Building.

Genetic medicine will be located where grounds services and housing support offices now occupy a site east of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Building, just south of Mason Farm Road.

Carolina scientists are helping finance the construction costs. Research grants they receive from the federal government and other sources bring with them overhead receipts — reimbursements for the cost of conducting research — that are the primary source of funding for the building. The medical and pharmacy schools also are raising private funds through the Carolina First Campaign. The building is scheduled for completion in 2007.

Genetic medicine is the latest highlight in a $1.3 billion construction program now transforming the university, thanks to a combination of funding including the North Carolina Higher Education Bond Referendum, private gifts to the Carolina First Campaign and overhead receipts.

The construction program is believed to be one of the most ambitious on any American college campus. The current construction represents the equivalent of combining the entire existing campuses of UNC-Charlotte and UNC-Wilmington. The renovation program is the equivalent of refurbishing the entire East Carolina campus. Guiding this flurry of activity is a campus master plan that aims to enhance the intellectual climate as well as show where and how to place buildings.

The university already has completed nearly a quarter of its overall construction program with 31 projects all within budget and on time with a total value of about $296 million.

Not quite half of the projects — 36 — are now under way. All are within budget and are valued at about $670 million.

Another 70 projects are under design and worth about $394 million.

Other newly completed projects include a $13 million renovation of the Health Sciences Library, which had a ribbon-cutting ceremony this week. Projects nearing completion include the $38.9 million Teaching Research Building, part of the School of Public Health; the $69 million Rams Head Center, near Kenan Stadium; and the $16.6 million renovation of Memorial Hall, which will celebrate its reopening next September.

Among other new projects recently in the spotlight have been the Global Education Center, a $31 million building located on the corner of McCauley and Pittsboro streets. The center is unique among U.S. colleges and universities for bringing together in one facility the three major components of international education: student services, academic programs and faculty research. When completed, the center will be an 80,000 square-foot building with a three-story main structure topped by a smaller fourth floor.

The building will include classroom space, a videoconferencing center and a home for several academic and student programs now spread across campus. Those include the Office of Study Abroad, the Curriculum in International and Area Studies, Carolina Asia Center, University Center for International Studies, Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, Center for African Studies, Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies, Center for European Studies, Institute of Latin American Studies, N.C. Center for South Asian Studies and the Institute for Advanced Research in International and Area Studies.