The Wharton School Is Ushering In 2020 With Two New Buildings On Campus
The Wharton School welcomes the new decade in style with the imminent inauguration of two state-of-the-art buildings, one for entrepreneurship and the other for data and analytics, which would enable the school to make an even bigger contribution to the world of business.
In 2017, Wharton’s Dean Geoffrey Garrett spearheaded a campaign to raise $60 million for Wharton Academic Research Building (WARB) to house data and analytics at Wharton. In 2018, Wharton confirmed the construction of a new building on campus, to be named Tangen Hall, after receiving a donation of $25 million from Wharton’s undergraduate alumnus, Nicolai Tangen (W’92), who is also the founder of London-based investment firm AKO Capital.
Tangen Hall
Spread over 70,000 square feet and located at 40th and Sansom Streets, Tangen Hall will be dedicated towards creating a dedicated space for cross-campus student entrepreneurship at UPenn. The building will also be home to a number of other entrepreneurship-focus programs, such as Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship, the Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Program, Weiss Tech House, the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center, the Wharton Small Business Development Center (SDBC), and the master’s-level Integrated Product Design Program. The building is scheduled for inauguration in Fall 2020.
Venture Lab, an initiative spearheaded by Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship, which serves as the student innovation hub and launch pad for the ideas that are conceptualized on the Penn campus, will also be housed at the Tangen Hall to centralize student entrepreneurship at the school. Besides providing students with just the right infrastructure, the Venture Lab will also improve the faculty involvement in entrepreneurship across the university, with 15 of 55 members from Wharton’s faculty currently focusing on teaching and research in entrepreneurship.
In a press release, University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutman says:
“Talented and creative students are working hard to identify challenges where they can implement efficient, sustainable, and actionable solutions through innovative ventures. Their efforts will start in Tangen Hall and have an impact across the country and around the world.”
Echoing the sentiment, Wharton’s Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Karl Ulrich says:
“Tangen Hall marks a new chapter for the entrepreneurial community at Penn and in Philadelphia, providing a central hub for the groundbreaking innovations that happen here every day. This physical space will allow faculty to more strongly support students who turn ideas into outcomes that will transform business for years to come.“
The donation from Nicolai Tangen will also bring to the fore the Katja and Nicolai Tangen International Endowed Scholarship, which will provide financial aid to international undergraduate students. The scholarship will be the fourth scholarship fund provided by the Tangens and the AKO Foundation and highlights their commitment towards the advancement of education.
Wharton Academic Research Building
The other building coming up on Wharton’s campus is the Wharton Academic Research Building or the WARB, which is 80,450 gross square feet in size. The building would have four floors of academic and research space, group study rooms, conference rooms and flat classrooms. The building will also be hosting the Wharton Statistics Department and support new developments in business analytics.
With a very distinctive, triangle shaped structure, the WARB will be located on the south side of of Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall. The Wharton School was granted $75 million to complete the project, though the initial request was for $60 million, with the total cost of the project coming out to be $87.65 million.
The project has faced numerous construction challenges ranging from noise complaints from residents on the Quad, restricted pathways, navigating existing underground utilities and avoiding an active SEPTA trolley route tunnel bordering the site. However, overcoming these odds, the construction of the building will be completed by Summer 2020.
