The Innovation Center at Hamilton College brings together digital fabrication, computer science and visualization technologies in a signature new building that advances research and innovation across the college’s liberal arts curriculum. The Innovation Center massing creates an outdoor raised terrace space that connects with the Burke Library and frames views between the 19thcentury Admission building and the Science Center.

The stone and precast concrete building reimagines the solidity of the campus’s collegiate gothic language to reflect the interior program. Two heavy stone ‘teaching blocks’ of classrooms and labs frame a transparent multistory Mixer space that connects research to the major digital and analog programs, outdoor landscapes and views. A circulation path connects the building’s three major public spaces: the Digital Gallery, the Mixer Space and the flexible Hybrid Teaching and Meeting event space.  The design of the Innovation Center’s local quartzite stone façade combines historic masonry practices and contemporary cast concrete mold making techniques. Cut offs from the cur face stone dressing process are saved and utilized to create zones of highly textured stone and reduce waste.

The two teaching blocks are designed with a clear span structure and vertical shafts to enable flexible, future forward technical infrastructure to support high speed data, advanced visualization, and maker spaces. Soldering stations, electronics and robotics labs, automated wood and metal fabrication equipment, laser cutters, 3D Printers, CNC routers and circuit-board milling machines enable undergraduates across a range of disciplines to undertake applied research and create projects that engage big data, AI and servo-electrical robotics.

Date: 2024-Present
Status: Ongoing
Client: Hamilton College
Location: Clinton, NY
Design Team:
Sheila Kennedy FAIA, Design Principal
Frano Violich FAIA, Managing Principal
Ned Goodell AIA, Project Architect
Ben Widger AIA

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