A new addition is coming to Florida International University's Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine campus in Miami: a 120,000-sq.-ft. outpatient medical center that combines clinical and academic functions in one building.
The structure will house the academic health partnership forged between FIU and Baptist Health South Florida in 2023, one intended to expand physician training, research and patient care for the region. The $162-million project is more than a new home for their burgeoning efforts, though. It also represents the next generation of academic health facilities, their designs and functions guided by and infused with AI.
Academia, especially health care, is aggressively trending toward an AI-centric curriculum. But many institutions lack the physical infrastructure to support such innovation — particularly in Florida, where the market for academic health campuses is still emerging.
That's where AI-assisted planning and programming come in, says Arturo Vasquez, senior principal architect of sustainable engineering, architecture and environmental consulting firm Stantec. The Canada-based architecture and engineering company has 34,000 employees worldwide, including 855 employees across 16 Florida offices.
Vasquez's four decades in the tech industry have taught him how fast technology moves. From Miami, he leads a Stantec team focused on creating and adopting advanced tools for Florida clients — including FIU. "I started to look for ways for the studio to be influenced by adaptive technology that helps us essentially do better work and be more responsive to what clients may be looking for," he says.
Among its offerings, Stantec uses AI-enabled tools and data-driven modeling to help universities optimize their campus planning, integrating school enrollment goals, space uses and student experiences. It also uses simulation, computational and wet labs to develop flexible building plans and test AI workflows. The firm has worked with academic health leaders such as Johns Hopkins Health System, Stanford Health Care and Penn Medicine. It has also worked with FIU in an architecture and engineering capacity for over a decade.
Since January 2025, Vasquez's team has been designing the forthcoming health sciences and clinical facility in Miami — the first FIU project for Stantec's architecture and medical planning team. Staffers are using Google's Gemini rendering software to prototype floorplans, plus a horde of AI-enabled analytics to map campus-wide planning.
"We had to invent fast technology that allowed us to do analytics, to space plan, to figure out how the building can flex ... and then try to rationalize all that formula together to essentially create architecture," Vasquez says. "A lot of firms do planning. But no firm, except for maybe a couple, can do sophisticated analytics in order to create an understanding of where a particular program can evolve, and therefore the campus can grow."
At press time, demolition of dormitories housed on the site had just begun. Construction is expected to be completed in 2028. Vasquez sees the project as a prime example of future AI planning for the FIU campus and other Florida universities.
"AI is transforming the pedagogy of the programs that they're going to offer for students," he says. "It's completely changing the infrastructure of what they're going to have to build in order to adapt to an unknown future, because AI technology is so rapidly growing. ... Are we just going to be at the back end of that? Or are we going to be at the front end and help visualize that?"