EdSurge: How Lassonde Studios ignites campus innovation

The article notes that the University of Utah has gone a step further, intentionally blending learning, making and living spaces. "In the process, it has ignited entrepreneurial innovation on its campus and potentially created a new template for others to design educational spaces that drive deep learning," the article says.

A breakthrough entrepreneurial education building that blends student residences with a 20,000-square-foot innovation hangar, Lassonde Studios has helped University of Utah quintuple the number of student startups on campus. It's vaulted the university into the "top 10" in entrepreneurial education across rankings from U.S. News & World Report, Princeton Review and Bloomberg—all in just two years since it opened.

“While there is a lot of research on new modes of learning, the exact link between entrepreneurship and students’ living spaces had not been tested,” says Mehrdad Yazdani, the lead designer and director of the Yazdani Studio of CannonDesign. “So, we decided to create a new typology for what a live-work space could be.”

“On one end there is a shop with a saw and a 3-D printer. On the other side there is a cafe,” says Troy D’Ambrosio, executive director of the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, which oversees the studio space. “In the middle, there’s a baby grand piano. Every now and then someone will sit down and play beautiful music with people standing around.”

The “beauty” of living in such a community is “being able to connect with the people around you in a much more professional and friendship-based sense,” says Logan Erikson, an entertainment arts and engineering student. “The way the building is laid out, people just naturally bump into each other.”