Cooking Up Collaboration
Most alumni remember the nondescript one-story building located on the north side of campus as Hicks Kitchen, site of the colleges’ central food service. By this time next year, however, students will be cooking up something completely different in the facility, thanks to a $2.4 million gift from Rice University trustee M. Kenneth Oshman ’62 and his wife, Barbara.
Renamed the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, the building will provide a space for undergraduate students majoring in mathematics or engineering to combine their expertise on practical assignments and collaborate on projects just as they will in the real world.
“The design experience is both a compelling mechanism for integrating deep knowledge of engineering fundamentals with practice and an unparalleled opportunity for students to learn how to function on a team,” said Sallie Keller-McNulty, dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering.
To create the full circle of real-world experience that has societal impact, the engineering school plans to extend the opportunity to study design to students in humanities, social sciences, architecture and business.
After Rice’s food service was decentralized in 2001, the 12,000-square-foot building was used for storage, although the Marching Owl Band uses the basement for a practice area. The renovations will expand the building’s size and create a large-group classroom; a machine shop; an etching room with a wet lab; a computational area; rooms for a 3-D printer, a PC milling machine and laser cutter; a plotter and copy room; and conference rooms and office space. In addition, a large area of the design kitchen will be used for assembling projects and will be known as the National Instruments Design, Prototype and Deploy Lab, made possible by a gift from National Instruments.
Anzie Gilmore, project manager for the renovation, said the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen will meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards for sustainable design. The side of the building along Campanile Road will have a long picture window revealing the work taking place inside. “The space is designed to be open and inviting, which will encourage student collaboration,” Gilmore said