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Construction crews direct a crane carrying the final structural beam to be placed at the top of VCU's Engineering Research Building. (Photo by Rodrigo Arriaza)
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University students and faculty sign the structural beam at the start of Tuesday's ceremony. (Photo by Rodrigo Arriaza)
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A rendering shows the finished 133,000-square-foot VCU Engineering Research Building at the corner of West Cary and South Belvidere streets. (Photo courtesy VCU College of Engineering)
With the sun shining overhead, construction crews carefully directed one last structural beam to the top of Virginia Commonwealth University's new four-story Engineering Research Building.
As workers put the final beam into place, university faculty and students applauded from the street below, celebrating an important milestone in the construction of the new College of Engineering facility at a "topping-off" ceremony Tuesday morning.
The 133,000-square-foot structure is set to open in the late fall of 2020, College of Engineering Dean Barbara Boyan said. Once it opens, the $93 million building will offer hands-on learning opportunities through a 9,000-square-foot Innovation Maker Facility, with resources such as 3D printers and hand tools, research labs, computer science and biomedical engineering facilities, and more.
VCU financed a portion of the building's construction costs, with additional funds coming from the state and private investors, according to a university news release. VCU President Michael Rao, who spoke prior to the beam-raising, says the idea for the research building began with Boyan, who detailed her vision for the space to him when she took the reins of the engineering school in 2012.
"This is really our opportunity to take what was a great idea out of the engineering school and turn it into a very significant, really great new model for engineering schools throughout the country," Rao says. "This was really important, because engineering schools, for the most part, haven't changed that much around the country, but this is an institution that is interested in getting ahead of that curve and going ahead of the level of changes that need to be made."
For her part, Boyan says the facility will fill a need for research and design facilities such as maker spaces that engineering students previously couldn't access easily.
"It was essential that our students have that opportunity to design and build in an environment that would foster their creativity. Our students did just great without one, but as our student body grew, it just became untenable," she says. "It will have everything in there that the students need to be creative in their design and all the things that make learning experiential, so we're really excited about it."
