New building

Introducing the new Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center

Investing in Wisconsin’s future

A new, state-of-the-art building is a critical starting point in our ability to provide a hands-on education to many more engineering students and help keep pace with industry growth.

News: $75 million gift for new UW-Madison engineering building

Big ideas for a bold building

This architecturally striking, 395,000-square-foot facility will be the centerpiece of our seven-building engineering campus. It will be multidisciplinary, hard-working and efficient, and its occupants, collaborative. It will feature shared laboratories that unite faculty, staff and students from disparate engineering disciplines around a common challenge.

A future-ready design

On day one, our new building will greatly expand our current capacity in “state-of-the-art” facilities for learning and discovery. Given the rapid pace of science and technology advances, however, we’re also thinking decades down the road. Through resilient spaces defined by what they are capable of, the building’s intentional design for reconfigurability will provide us freedom to pivot, adapt and evolve as the future emerges.

Human-centered and sustainable

Designed under the Wisconsin Division of Facilities Development Sustainability Guidelines, our building will take the best advantage of its site on our campus, maximizing sunlight and passive daylighting while minimizing shadows from surrounding structures. Throughout the building, welcoming, open spaces will showcase engineering, foster a sense of pride and belonging, enhance safety, and contribute to occupants’ overall well-being. A terrace atop the learning wing will add outdoor community space, while an adjacent green roof will manage stormwater and mitigate the urban heat island effect. The learning wing itself will be biophilic, constructed with sweeping windows and visible mass timber materials that reduce embodied carbon and bring the outdoors inside. Rooftop photovoltaics on the building’s main wing will help meet some of its energy needs.

Innovative, inside and out

Sleek and sophisticated. Interactive and inviting. It’s not just another building. Every aspect has been computationally optimized. Space types with defined capabilities will be located within the building so that its services and systems can change to serve people, programs and facilities needs in the future. Research laboratories will emerge into collaborative work or gathering spaces before transitioning into a central hallway, or even directly outdoors. Dashboards will enable building operators to monitor the building’s performance. A breathtakingly beautiful facility of unparalleled detail, artistry and engineering innovation, it will, without a doubt, deliver the ultimate student experience for generations to come.

Cumulative effects

Our college must raise $150 million, while the state’s contribution is $197 million. Your gifts will help us construct this transformative new facility. Even more importantly, however, is that your support will enable us to allow a greater number of talented students to become outstanding Badger engineers, empower them to maximize their creativity, and solve tomorrow’s problems.

To make a gift, or to learn more about options to support spaces throughout the building, contact Director of Development Rob Herrick.

Rob Herrick

Director of Development

Contact Rob

Amplifying our impact

Our new building represents another step in an exciting time of growth for us—an engineering college that (for the better part of 175 years) has made a profound impact on generations of engineering students, and on citizens around the globe. The new building will position our college to magnify this impact.

September 6, 2024