Penn State has held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of the $88.2 million Engineering Design and Innovation Building (EDIB) on the west end of University Park, Pa., campus.
The Centre Daily Times reports that the facility is part of a $1 billion revitalization of the west end of campus. The 105,000-square-foot building has more than 1,300 tons of steel, 750 tons of rebar and 575 truckloads of concrete.
“There’s nothing like it in the world,” said engineering professor Matt Parkinson, the director of The Learning Factory, a hands-on facility housed inside the building.
The university says about 2,100 square feet of the building are devoted to general purpose classroom space, and another 8,200 square feet are set aside in support of research. The building has 11 classrooms, a high-bay research space, a number of maker’s spaces and collaborative areas.
The planned occupants are still in the process of moving into the building, and machinery and other equipment still must be added. The university expects the building to be fully ready by this fall.
More improvements to the west end of campus are coming. Another engineering building, West 1, is slated for completion next spring and, when finished, it’s set to be nearly triple the size of the Engineering Design and Innovation facility.
