Strategic Space Planning to Advance Collaboration

Committed to understanding how the optimization of physical space and refreshed facilities could advance their strategic goals and bolster research initiatives, the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) enlisted HDR to engage in a comprehensive space planning study. The study considered Penn Engineering’s signature research initiatives, including Precision Engineering for Health, Innovation in Data Engineering and Science, Energy and Sustainability, Quantum Information Science and Engineering, as well as the school’s vision of collaborative research with the School of Medicine and the School of Arts and Sciences.  

Taking Inventory  

An inventory of the school’s existing engineering spaces highlighted the current program needs, space utilization and state of infrastructure. With two new SEAS buildings coming online, this inventory helped the team identify significant square footage within Penn Engineering’s existing buildings, located in the heart of Penn’s campus, as critical backfill opportunities.  

Providing Guidelines

Penn Engineering currently occupies space in 15 buildings totaling approximately 645,000 gross square feet. This study established guidelines that considered strategic adjacencies, wet and dry laboratory expansion, student collaboration and staff consolidation. The final report outlined a conceptual design strategy and a breakdown of capital projects that considered project costs, enabling projects, swing space and phasing.

Reimagining Higher Education Spaces

A main objective of the study was to keep student-focused activity within the heart of the complex, while strategically relocating academic departments to facilitate collaborative research. Like many higher education facilities built in the last century, the school’s older buildings were unable to support modern active learning, team- and theme-based research. This study reimagines the space allocation in many of these existing buildings, explores efficiencies and realigns academic programmatic functions to best support the school’s goals.