The new 135,000-square-foot Computer Design, Research and Learning Center (CDRLC) at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) will consolidate the University’s Computer Engineering & Science Departments into a new home and co-locate it with a large cluster of classrooms at the heart of the East Campus.

The CDRLC will create a hub for both computer engineering and computer science that includes research areas comprised of faculty offices, collaboration areas, dry lab and specialty lab; administrative and student affairs office spaces; collaborative teaching and learning spaces for undergraduate and graduate students; an undergraduate learning and community center; and a flexible events room; all unified by a five-story, day-lit atrium. It will notably house a 1,200-square-foot robotics lab and UIC’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory, an internationally renowned interdisciplinary research lab.

Building on UIC’s successes with geo-thermal energy resources, the project will include a new geo-thermal farm beneath the Walter Netsch-designed Memorial Grove garden area that will assist with sustainable heating and cooling of the building. The CDRLC building is designed to achieve LEED Gold certification.