Building

Towards a Culture of Building and Making

In 2017, approval was given to launch a new Master of Architecture degree at Indiana University Bloomington. The J. Irwin Miller Architecture program is part of the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture, and Design, and admitted its first cohort of students in fall 2018.

The program’s studios and classrooms are housed in the Republic Building in Columbus, Indiana, a city well known for its modern architecture, and uses Columbus’s historic and robust civic consciousness to integrate architecture, art, and design with the city’s unique public-private coalition process.

In this “living laboratory,” students will make the invisible process of community collaboration visible and concrete by creating a common language for shared problem solving. Public-private fabrication facilities in Columbus also create opportunities for faculty, students, and community to collaborate.

In October 2019, Indiana University alumnus and information technology pioneer Fred Luddy provided generous funding to establish a multidisciplinary initiative in artificial intelligence at IU, based in what is now named the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. In 2017–18, the school initiated bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and a Ph.D., in the field of Intelligent Systems Engineering.

The school moved into the spectacular Luddy Hall in January 2018. The building’s open, light-filled atmosphere has become a magnet for students from across campus, especially in the rooms that line the main stairway. There are multiple labs and makerspaces throughout the building, culminating with the Intelligent Systems Engineering prototype lab on the fourth floor of the building which has spectacular views to the north, west, and south. Luddy Hall also includes the 3,500 square-foot Shoemaker Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which provides a welcoming space for students and faculty from across campus. Luddy Hall is on Woodlawn Avenue and was the first building to be built as part of IU’s 50-year master plan, which envisions a “Woodlawn Corridor” of buildings to extend to the athletic complex.

McRobbie overlooking Indianapolis at an IUPUI building site

Indiana University Bloomington has been expanding its design and makerspace capabilities and facilities across the campus from a new makerspace facility connected with the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering Living Learning Center to the MADLab in the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture, and Design and MILLab in the School of Education. In early 2020, IU Bloomington will open the campus Innovation Gym (I-Gym), which will include facilities, equipment, and services to support all phases of the design and making process from initial concept to product commercialization.

At IUPUI, a multidisciplinary group in 3D Printing and Bioprinting resulted in the establishment of a new IUPUI Core for Bioprinting which successfully competed for an NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant to purchase a scaffold-free bioprinter (the first in an academic institution in the United States).