Bradley's Newest Campus Building Receives Prestigious Recognition

Bradley University’s newest building, the Business and Engineering Convergence Center, received the prestigious Outstanding Design - Specialized Facility 2021 award from American School & University.

The Business and Engineering Convergence Center officially opened on Nov. 1, 2019. The 200,000-plus-square-foot structure includes 40-plus collaboration spaces, ten formal conference rooms, 28 classrooms, eight computer labs and 200 faculty and staff offices. It also has 46 specialized labs, including a five-story drop tower for experiments to measure impact conditions, a sales lab for business role-playing, an analytics lab with a 5-by-31 foot high-definition monitor, and two electronic stock tickers. The design encourages collaborative education and is the home of the Foster College of Business, Caterpillar College of Engineering and Technology, and the Institute for Innovation through Collaboration.

For 39 years, the American School & University's Architectural Portfolio Award has been the industry’s most recognized awards program for education design excellence. Published in cooperation with the American Institute of Architects, this prestigious competition celebrates architects and education institutions for their achievements in outstanding school and university design.

Dewberry, the project architecture firm, submitted the project for consideration. Criteria for this award include the following:

• Inclusive and welcoming to all
• Agile
• Beauty that inspires joy
• Seamless integration of indoors and out
• Promotes collaboration, community and active learning
• Exhibits innovation throughout
• Sustainability
• Budget-conscious
• Health and Safety
• High-quality construction

Each year a jury of architects and education administrators judge the submitted designs and choose only the best to publish in the Architectural Portfolio issue of American School & University. First published in 1983, the Architectural Portfolio is the acknowledged “Academy Award” of school design.

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