Bradley University – Business and Engineering Convergence Center

The Convergence Center is the manifestation of a progressive approach to combined engineering and innovation education with applied entrepreneurship in business education to foster a truly collaborative environment which facilitates the productive engagement of theory and design with viable implementation within market forces. This is expressed architecturally in the combination of the business and engineering schools into a common facility which encourages the casual and intentional overlaps of faculty and student interactions aimed at diverse dialogue and a multitude of valuable outcomes. Academic departments maintain autonomy and identity by occupying distinct wings of the building with the blurred line of shared social and teaming spaces nested in a central atrium. This activated interface provides for major vertical circulation and an unfolding and changing vista through the movement of the user while creating a sense of shared experience across this void through metaphorical glazed cliff faces fronting on laboratories and collaboration spaces joined by multiple connecting bridges.