Penn State Chemical Engineering And Biomedical Engineering Building

The building and site have the opportunity to build on the legacy of Penn State’s attractive open space and student/faculty/staff experience and be the catalyst for the fundamental transformation for the chemical engineering and biomedical engineering departments.

The site of the new Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering is centrally located within the University Park campus. The building and site have the opportunity to build on the legacy of Penn State’s attractive open space and student/faculty/staff experience and be the catalyst for the fundamental transformation for the chemical engineering and biomedical engineering departments. At the core of this transformation is to create an environment that promotes successful student recruitment, growth, and development while fully supporting PI research and advancement.

Collision Spaces

From a campus planning perspective, the building and site have been designed to create a seamless relationship with the surrounding campus. Being centrally located on campus between student housing, campus destinations, and academic areas, the site is at the crossroads of major campus pedestrian circulation, both existing and planned. As a result, the site is very active with pedestrian circulation.

There is a clear correlation between a student’s academic achievement and the degree of social engagement they feel within the campus community. Building places that reinforce a student’s sense of belonging within a community at each level, with their classmate, faculty, research advisor, department, and campus as a whole, is critical to success. The site strategy for the new CEBME project is to design with a clear emphasis on strengthening social and academic collaboration. The site provides several ‘Collision Spaces’, those formal and informal physical gathering places, corridors, and hubs on site where people collide and interact.