Together with the existing lab building, the new CDRLC creates a dramatic public atrium for social interactions with visual and physical connections to all floors.
Computer Design, Research, and Learning Center
University of Illinois Chicago
Location
Chicago, Illinois
Owner
University of Illinois Chicago
Associate Architect: Booth Hansen
General Contractor: W.E. O'Neil
Construction Manager: Mortenson Construction
Structural Engineering: Magnusson Klemencic Associates, Drucker Zajdel Structural Engineers
MEP Engineering: Affiliated Engineers, Inc.
Civil Engineering: Terra Engineering, Ltd.
Landscape Architecture: SITE Design Group, Ltd.
Lighting Design: Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design
Project Size
134,735 square feet
Project Status
In Progress
Certifications
Targeting LEED New Construction Gold
Services
Architecture, Interior Design, Planning
The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is a public research university and one of the most diverse universities in the United States. The Computer Design, Research, and Learning Center (CDRLC) at UIC will consolidate the currently fragmented Computer & Science Department in a new home and co-locate it with a large cluster of university-administered classrooms at the heart of the east campus. The building is designed to be a welcoming, inclusive, and inviting space for the diverse student body.
The CDRLC is the third recent academic building to be built on the east campus originally designed by Walter Netsch in 1965. It will create a hub for both engineering and computer science that includes research areas comprised of faculty offices, collaboration areas, dry lab, and specialty lab; administrative and student affairs office spaces; collaborative teaching and learning spaces for undergraduate and graduate students; an undergraduate learning and community center; and a flexible events room; all stitched together by a five story daylit atrium.
Creating a contemporary addition to this iconic brutalist campus, the building is functional, flexible, and respectful of the context. Located at a prominent site on campus, the structure celebrates the organic form of the Memorial Grove and establishes a new front door for technology in Chicago. Building on UIC’s successes with geo-thermal energy resources, the project will include a new geo-thermal farm in the Memorial Grove, and the building has been designed to achieve LEED Gold certification.
“The new CDRLC represents the future of higher education at UIC and is intended to be a welcoming space to promote innovation, collaboration, and discovery.”
– Peter Nelson, Dean, UIC College of Engineering
