University of Cincinnati, Digital Futures Research Building

Project Narrative

With exposed floors, ceilings, and expansive glass walls, the design creates a raw yet refined industrial backdrop—punctuated by vibrant insertions of color, art, and graphics that express a digital language in the material environment—to inspire the creativity of the building’s inhabitants.

Digital Futures is not only a central hub for the region’s top researchers and students, but it is designed to be a good neighbor. It warmly welcomes neighbors for events and community meetings. The ground floor is designed like a café and gallery space where research is always on display. You can watch a precision flight experiment in the drone high bay while sipping a cup of coffee; see how Augmented Reality can help design the next generation of automobiles; or explore how motion capture technology can improve athletic performance.

The upper floors of the facility have research labs, classrooms, meeting rooms, and open collaboration spaces to support creative thinking. Encouraging the kind of connection that will enrich disparate research projects, the labs are grouped together in conceptual neighborhoods. Research initiatives find their homes in labs that are arrayed along the building’s perimeter, but the building’s core draws people together again to share resources—VR studios, computer labs, workspaces, social spaces—and ideas. Careful planning ensured that daylight and views are accessible throughout each floor.
While enabling research teams flex into shared spaces, the labs themselves are highly adaptable to meet the changing needs of regularly rotating research initiatives.

                                           

Project Details

Submission Category

Interior Architecture- Large Scale (>5,000 sf)

Date of Completion

February, 2022