Entrepreneurship center wins architectural award; Discovery Park building continues
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship has earned a major architectural award, as other facilities at Purdue University's Discovery Park are being completed and coming online.
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The lead architectural firm for the Burton Morgan Center was Goody Clancy, which is based in Boston. The Boston Society of Architects had high praise for the building in the comments it issued when it made the award.
"This is a new academic research and meeting center, and the architect provided complete architectural and interior design services as well as master planning and site design. This is very thoughtful work marked by an excellent choice of materials that enabled the architect to create a bridge between the old campus and the new. The lighting and the detailing in general are extremely well done. This is a beautiful building and is clearly the work of a very thoughtful architect."
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"We're proud that the Burton Morgan Center is being recognized as a purpose-driven building, and the purpose is collaborations among professors, researchers, students, inventors and the public," Blewett said.
"This is not your ivy-covered hall with venues for lectures and labs. The center is an environment with conference, breakout and presentation rooms you would expect in a high-tech corporation. The center's job is to promote entrepreneurship and help take Discovery Park research to the marketplace, but we're also in the education business. This is a practical model of where and how to do education in a new way."
The entrepreneurship center was the first building completed in Discovery Park, Purdue's interdisciplinary research and enterprise hub. Last fall, the Birck Nanotechnology and Bindley Bioscience centers were completed and dedicated, and equipment is being moved in and laboratories set up.
Construction has begun on the e-Enterprise Center, just south of the entrepreneurship center, and the Biomedical Engineering Building will be completed this summer.
Discovery Park represents a multidisciplinary approach to research that ranges from existing social problems that need to be solved to new opportunities offered by the marketplace.
"We're interested in bringing established knowledge from engineering, management and other disciplines to bear on what seem to be insoluble existing problems — what we refer to as 'grand challenges,' " said Alan H. Rebar, executive director of Discovery Park. "For example, our Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering aims to bring to medical delivery the systems engineering and management thinking that have revolutionized almost every other industry in the last 20 years."
The e-Enterprise Center is also housing initiatives in advanced manufacturing and homeland security. Discovery Park recently announced new initiatives in energy, oncology, cyber infrastructure and the environment.
"It's appropriate that plans call for a series of walkways and bridges to connect the entrepreneurship center to the other Discovery Park facilities. The mission of the entrepreneurship center is to inject enterprise into the grand challenges and fundamental research of Discovery Park," said Jerry Woodall, director of the entrepreneurship center.
"This takes place in the entrepreneurship center where researchers, students and entrepreneurs come together to ask and answer questions about the potentials and paths to market of the discoveries that solve problems and create new products."
Woodall said the nanotechnology and bioscience centers are engaged in fundamental research in these fields that have vast potential for life-changing products ranging from wrinkle- and stain-free clothing to implantable diagnostic and rehabilitative medical devices. Nanotechnology and bioscience are by nature so multidisciplinary that they may well redefine the fields of the scientists, engineers and other researchers who come together to uncover nature's secrets.
The building was funded by the Burton D. Morgan Foundation, established by Morgan, a Purdue alumnus from Hudson, Ohio, who died in 2003. Morgan received his Purdue degree in mechanical engineering in 1938. In 1992, the university awarded him an honorary doctorate in management.
Writer: Mike Lillich, (765) 494-2077, mlillich@purdue.edu
Sources: Don Blewett, (765) 494-4445, blewett@purdue.edu
Alan Rebar, (765) 496-6625, rebar@purdue.edu
Jerry Woodall, (765) 494-3479, woodall@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
Note to Journalists: A map of Discovery Park is available online.
Related news releases:
Purdue dedicates Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship
Undergrad entrepreneurship certificate aims to enroll 1,000 students
PHOTO CAPTION:
The Boston Society of Architects awarded the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship the 2005 Design Excellence Honor Award. The society chose the $7 million, 31,000-square-foot, two-story Morgan center located on State Street on the west edge of campus from a national pool of entrants. The center was the first building completed in Purdue's Discovery Park, the university's hub for interdisciplinary research and enterprise. (Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)
A publication-quality photo is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/+2006/morgan-entcenter-ext.jpg
The Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, completed in 2004, includes a 72-seat lecture room, a presentation room, faculty offices, a café and several conference and breakout rooms for use by park occupants. The Boston Society of Architects, in awarding its Design Excellence Honor Award, described the center as "a beautiful building and is clearly the work of a very thoughtful architect." (Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)
A publication-quality photo is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/+2006/morgan-entcenter-int2.jpg
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