University of Pennsylvania Reveals Plans for New Facility

PHILADELPHIA, PA – The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) has released architectural renderings of the design for the transformative Tangen Hall. The new building will be Penn’s first dedicated space for cross-campus student entrepreneurship and innovation activity.

University of Pennsylvania Tangen Hall

Developed by the Hankin Group, KSS Architects’ design for Tangen Hall sets up each floor with a destination program. A façade of precast concrete and shades of green glass will offer a transparent view into the innovation culture at Penn. The project uses sustainable materials and is designed to meet Penn’s LEED Silver target.

Supporting student entrepreneurship and innovation, the seven-story, 68,000-square-foot building will be one of the largest hubs of its kind on any college campus. It will include incubator spaces and maker spaces to pilot student-led ventures, a test kitchen for food-centric startups, and the master’s level Integrated Product Design Program jointly operated by Wharton, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Tangen Hall will also be home to the new Venture Lab, where students from across Penn’s 12 schools can turn good ideas into great outcomes.

Construction of Tangen Hall is slated to begin in spring 2019 and be completed by fall 2020.

Featured

  • Spaces4Learning Launches 2026 Facilities and Construction Brief Survey

    Spaces4Learning recently launched the 2026 Facilities and Construction Brief Survey, which collects data on the previous year’s K–12 and higher education construction projects nationwide.

  • Q&A: How to Prevent Kitchen Grease Fires in Commercial Kitchens

    School cafeterias and university dining halls serve thousands of meals daily, relying on high-heat equipment like fryers, grills, and ovens. While these operations keep students fed, they also generate significant grease-laden vapors. Without proper controls, this grease becomes a silent fire threat. As a certified exhaust cleaning specialist and business coach who has helped hundreds of institutional facilities achieve NFPA 96 compliance, I emphasize that proactive grease management isn’t optional; it’s a core fire/life safety practice.

  • Dallas ISD Voters Approve $6.2B Bond Package

    Dallas ISD voters have approved a record-setting $6.2-billion bond package that district leaders say will modernize aging campuses, eliminate portable classrooms and reshape learning environments across one of the nation’s largest school systems.

  • Opportunity by Design Framework

    Opportunity by Design

    Educational improvement efforts often focus on curriculum, instruction, assessment, professional development, and intervention systems while treating the physical school building as background. But school design is not a passive backdrop to learning — it is a structural lever for equity.