Sometimes to be new and cutting edge, you’ve got to be willing to age. Lassonde Studios, the newest building at the University of Utah hals won accolades for being designed to show the ravages of time. As Architectural Digest explains, the $45 million building’s sleek copper exterior is meant to fade and change color [aka tarnish] as time ticks forward. But because it is built on a grid system, Lassonde Studios is designed for future additions and modifications—perfect for its role as a dorm meant to also inculcate entrepreneurial creativity.
The aesthetic age, combined with its embrace of change, won the new U building a ranking as “one of the nine best new university buildings around the globe.”
The building’s namesake Pierre Lassonde he wanted “an iconic structure that would enhance the experience of our students and create more entrepreneurs.”
Lassonde Studios stated that “all students on campus are invited to live, create and launch new companies here.” The building houses 400 students above its benevolent “innovation space” on the ground level which is welcome to all students on campus as an invitation to create new businesses or just to sit in strange-yet-chic hanging tent chairs
Awards aren’t a new concept to the Lassonde Studios—the building is managed by a division of the David Eccles School of Business which received high praise from the Princeton Review as one of the best business programs on earth today. Before Lassonde Studios was even built Bloomberg Businessweek called Lassonde “a souped-up Silicon Valley workspaces, [which] blurs life and work the same way technology giants Facebook and Google do at their headquarters.” The New York Times even called it “plusher” than the “early lifestyle of dot-com employees.” — Amy Whiting
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