Our task was to design an approximately 27,000 sf new stand-alone building to house a prestigious and award-winning Entrepreneurship program and to meet or exceed Florida’s stringent environmental requirements. The client mandated that the new building be a “repeat” of the adjacent Community Counseling Center (see Site Plan) so the design team’s aesthetic control of the exterior was significantly limited. The design challenge became one that was primarily focused on the interior architecture to meet the goals of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
The design intent was to minimize both the physical and visual separation between students and faculty and for the building to embody the definition of ‘entrepreneurship’. Entrepreneurs ‘build’ or create something new. They expose, change, or transmute values that stand apart. To this end, we elected to ‘expose’ what buildings are made of - steel structure, concrete slabs, mechanical systems, and electrical conduits - throughout the public spaces to inspire students to ‘build’ a business.
The entire ground floor plan consists of a series of transparent, glass-walled collaboration rooms and faculty offices that open directly onto a large reconfigurable, interactive incubator space where up to 200 students can gather and exchange ideas with each other and faculty members as well as meet with local business leaders. On the second and third floors are student classrooms, a maker space including 3D printers and laser cutting equipment, a computer lab and a professional grade multi-media recording studio. The building includes numerous public interactive spaces on all three floors where custom-commissioned artwork has been placed and where students gather in smaller, quieter groups to study or share ideas.
