The University of Pennsylvania broke ground in June of 2019 on the $46 million Tangen Hall in Philadelphia. Designed by KSS Architects, the seven-story, 768,000-sf building will house the Integrated Product Design Program, the Venture Lab, the Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Program, the Weiss Tech House, the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center, and space for the Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship program.
Rice University broke ground in July of 2019 on The Ion in Houston. Fostering the creation of new digital technologies, the $110 million project includes the renovation of a former Sears building to create a 270,000-sf innovation hub for data sciences research initiatives. Designed by Gensler, SHoP Architects, James Carpenter Design Associates, and James Corner Field Operations, the center will offer event spaces, meeting rooms, business incubation suites, dining venues, and entertainment amenities.
Eastern Michigan University is engaged in a $40 million renovation of Sill Hall in Ypsilanti. Featuring highly adaptable infrastructure for optimal flexibility, the $40 million project will create sophisticated laboratories and experiential learning environments for the College of Engineering and Technology.
The University of Illinois at Chicago is planning to build the $96 million Computing, Design, Research and Learning Center. Designed by Booth Hansen to support new instructional paradigms, the 168,000-sf facility will provide auditoria, lecture halls, dry research labs, interdisciplinary student design space, faculty and staff offices, and collaboration areas. The Department of Computer Science will be housed in the building, which will feature flexible classrooms comprised of modules that can be easily adapted to accommodate diverse class sizes and types.
The term “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) was coined in 2016 by Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, to describe the exponential transformation society and commerce are experiencing due to converging breakthroughs in numerous fields, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, the internet of things (IoT), and quantum computing. While this latest advancement is to some degree an extension of the third revolution (aka: The Digital Revolution), 4IR is considered a new era because of the unprecedented speed, scope, and systems impact of the coming changes. It is evolving at an exponential rate rather than a linear one and is expected to disrupt entire systems of production, management, transportation, and governance on a global scale. In response, a new breed of interdisciplinary research facility is emerging, as academic institutions try to anticipate training students for the unforeseen demands of the 4IR.
Lowe's Companies is planning to create the $153 million Global Technology Center in Charlotte, N.C. The 375,000-sf facility will be located on 15 upper floors in the planned Design Center Tower, a 23-story building developed by a joint venture of Childress Klein and RAM Realty Advisors. The Lowe’s Global Technology Center will provide collaborative offices, meeting rooms, computer labs, and interaction areas to accelerate the development of solutions for the transformation of the company's technology systems.
Hewlett Packard (HP) opened the 3D Printing and Digital Manufacturing Center of Excellence in June of 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. Supporting leading-edge research and development in additive manufacturing, the facility provides sophisticated research labs and instrumentation suites as well as a large-scale factory environment for active collaboration with customers and industry partners.
The U.S. Air Force broke ground in June of 2019 on the $12.8 million Space Control Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. The 26,000-sf facility will enable the Air Force Research Laboratory to consolidate operations currently sited in six disparate locations at the site.
Seattle University broke ground in May of 2019 on the $115 million Center for Science and Innovation. Designed by EYP Architecture and Engineering and Mithūn Image, the five-story, 111,000-sf facility will house the College of Science and Engineering's programs in biology, chemistry, and computer science.
Siemens officially launched the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center in May of 2019 in Chengdu, China. Located in the Chengdu High-tech Zone, the facility houses the Smart Manufacturing Center of Excellence, the Smart Manufacturing Professional Lab, the Industry Solutions Research Center, and the Talent Training Platform.
Chugai Pharmaceuticals will begin construction in August of 2019 on a $1.15 billion research and development center in Yokohama, Japan. Consolidating two labs currently sited in Gotemba and Kamakura, the facility will support drug discovery including the creation of therapies based on next-generation antibodies and synthetic macrocycles, also known as middle molecules. The pharmaceutical research center will leverage leading-edge automation processes and artificial intelligence technologies to accelerate the delivery of innovative medicines to patients worldwide.
Georgia Tech opened the $375 million Coda building in May of 2019. Located at Technology Square in Atlanta, the 755,000-sf innovation hub provides interdisciplinary research space for Georgia Tech's data analytics and computational science programs, as well as offering leasable offices and labs for industry partners. The 21-story tower features a central piazza with a spiral staircase leading to the Collaboration Core, a series of six three-story vertical atriums that join the wings of the building.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory broke ground on the $95 million Translational Research Capability facility in May of 2019 in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Located on a brownfield site on ORNL’s main campus, the three-story, 100,000-sf building will provide laboratory and office space to support research programs in computing, quantum information, and materials science.
The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) celebrated the opening of the Cobb County Research Facility South in May of 2019. Located in Smyrna on land purchased from Lockheed Martin, the 350,000-sf campus houses the Aerospace, Transportation, and Advanced Systems Laboratory (ATAS); the Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Hardware Evaluation Research Laboratory (CIPHER); the Electronic Systems Laboratory (ELSYS); and the Sensors and Electromagnetic Applications Laboratory (SEAL).
The University of Maryland opened the $152 million Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering in April of 2019 in College Park. Housing the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, the six-story, 215,600-sf facility will support groundbreaking research and education programs in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, robotics, data science, cybersecurity, quantum computing, and virtual and augmented reality.
