We are pleased to announce PAYETTE has been awarded the West 1 and West 2 Buildings for the College of Engineering at Penn State University. These buildings will become the anchors for a re-imagined West Quadrangle on the University Park campus, defined by the Leonhard Building to the south, Applied Science Building to the east, and Earth and Engineering Science to the north.
Penn State Harold and Inge Marcus Dean of Engineering Justin Schwartz shared the impact these projects will have for the College of Engineering in a press release.
The two new buildings will strengthen and broaden the college’s educational programs, advance its research capabilities, allow us to engage new faculty in emerging areas and deepen the college’s impact on society. In short, we will have not built just new buildings, but new opportunities for faculty and students to elevate their thinking to transform the world.
Justin Schwartz, Penn State Dean of Engineering
West 2 will provide approximately 98,000 GSF of flexible classrooms, multi-use design studios, “cornerstone to capstone” maker spaces, high-bay research labs, faculty offices and research cores to benefit multiple engineering disciplines. The 279,000 GSF West 1 will also house knowledge commons with collaborative student work space, departmental administrative and faculty offices and research laboratories, food service and pedestrian connections to position the building as a welcoming and active university hub.
PAYETTE has had the pleasure of working with Penn State University for the past 18 years, most recently on the College of Engineering Master Plan. PAYETTE also completed the Gateway to the Sciences: Chemistry and Life Sciences Building and the Pell Lab for Advanced Biological Studies.
Aligned with our firm goals, Penn State University has a commitment to environmental sustainability and the West 1 and West 2 buildings will be designed as high-performance buildings with a minimum of LEED Gold certification.
The West 1 and West 2 Buildings represent a once in a generation campus transformation. This project exemplifies our values of the fusion of design and performance, believing that beautiful buildings perform beautifully. We are honored to work with Penn State University to develop a unified, comprehensive design intervention on campus.
Jeff DeGregorio, PAYETTE Principal
We look forward to working with the College of Engineering to design buildings that have a deep commitment to architecture that is both fundamentally connected to the campus landscape at its core while providing new space for the next generation of research and learning for the College of Engineering.
The 2025 OpenLAB Boston studio work will be exhibited at Virginia Tech Monday, March 2nd through Wednesday, March 4th.
Please join us for the following events on Monday, March 2nd:
11:00am - Lecture with Parke MacDowell
1:00pm Lobby talk with Kevin Sullivan
This year’s studio identifies seven sites along the frayed edges of Boston’s Greenway. The Greenway is a one-mile-long linear park running through the heart of the city, reconnecting downtown Boston with its waterfront. Many of the parcels along its edges remain undeveloped and present mute, blank facades to the public realm. Addressing and repairing these edges through acts of infilling, layering, grafting, framing, and placemaking is the core focus of the studio—SUTURE.