University of Windsor Centre for Engineering Innovation (B+H Architects, LEED)

[ProjectEnd]

The University of Windsor’s board of governors has approved budget and design plans for the new $112 million Centre for Engineering Innovation (CEI). Tenders are to be called in September.

Designed by Toronto’s B+H Architects, the 300,000-square-foot green building will focus on research and development. Phase 1 will include an industrial “courtyard†and laboratories. Phase 2 will include classrooms and offices.

Destined to be the largest LEED Gold building in the region, the centre will be constructed of recycled materials where possible. It will feature a green roof, water recycling, low-energy heating and other sustainability systems.

It is intended to be a “living†building, where students can learn from the electrical, mechanical, civil and environmental engineering systems displayed throughout the structure.

B+H has hired JPT Management as project managers and Windsor’s Mike D’Maio as the local architect.

The project is expected to provide a boost for the local construction industry, generating an estimated 1,600 construction jobs over a three-year period. Construction is expected to get under way in November.

Phase 1 is scheduled for completion by March 31, 2011 while Phase 2 is to be finished by summer 2012.

Considered a major step for the university and the region, the centre will provide laboratories and research facilities where such priorities as environmental sustainability and alternative energy can be addressed.

The courtyard will team the university, business and other partners in an environment to facilitate a direct connection between education, research, and industrial innovation.

“Engineering students will have a unique opportunity to work with companies and researchers to test ideas, solve problems, and develop strategies for translating ideas into commercially viable processes,†said Graham Reader, dean of the Faculty of Engineering.

“Work at the CEI will also ensure that employers have a steady flow of highly qualified, locally educated graduates with practical technological and leadership skills.â€

The project is expected to have a total direct and indirect economic stimulus impact in Ontario and Canada of $270 million over three years.

 

[khris]

Pretty cool looking, however very mish mashy.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Perhaps, like KPMB's new, similarly "mish mashy" George Brown campus on the waterfront, the complexity of forms reflects the variety of uses the building will be put to and the different departmental identities it'll contain? There's a common thread to such educational compounds that's different from, say, a simple office building - be it a vertical slab like Bay Adelaide or a grande horizontale slab like Corus - or from an apartment building like Casa for that matter, where simplification and communality are stressed and there's no need to express a variety of uses that doesn't exist.

 

[khris]

That does make sense. I wonder why they build new Secondary Schools as just plain square multi storey buildings...