LMN Architects-designed computer learning center opens in Chicago

The new 12,542-m² (135,000-sf) Computer Design, Research, and Learning Center (CDRLC) at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) will consolidate the currently fragmented department in a new home and co-locate its many classrooms at the heart of its east campus.

The building is designed to be a welcoming, inclusive, and inviting space for the diverse student body. The building will serve research needs with state-of-the-art facilities, accommodate the rapidly increasing undergraduate enrollment in computer science, and become a new campus hub.

The CDRLC is the third recent academic building to be built on the east campus originally designed by Walter Netsch in 1965. The building will be delivered on an accelerated schedule to meet the demands of the department, doubling its capacity by 2023. It will create a hub for both engineering and computer science that includes research areas comprised of faculty offices, collaboration areas, dry 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.

LMN Architects of Seattle, Washington, served as architect on the project.

“Together with the department, university, and CBD, our team of LMN and Booth Hansen have designed the building to become a welcoming hub, a building that embraces the old and presents an iconic new presence along Taylor Street,” says LMN partner Stephen Van Dyck, AIA. “Throughout the design process, we have been inspired by the convergences that this project represents. At the heart of it all is the convergence of UIC’s mission and the region’s growing tech prominence. For so many in the region, this new building will symbolize opportunity.”

The project will include a new geothermal farm in the Memorial Grove, and the building has been designed to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification.