Tangen Hall, a hub for entrepreneurial activities at the University of Pennsylvania, acts as a “start here” button for students and alumni on campus and a beacon to the outside world of Penn’s commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship. Home to Venture Lab, a¬¬ partnership by the Wharton School, Penn Engineering, and the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, Tangen Hall centralizes Penn’s startup ecosystem.
Conceptualized as a “toolbox for the University,” the design focuses on fluid interaction at various scales, from large-scale collaborations at the ground-floor maker lab to cross-disciplinary team workshops on the upper floors. Each floor is branded by a destination program that acts as a magnet, drawing people vertically through the building. Spaces to support student-led ventures include incubator spaces, a test kitchen for food-centric startups, dozens of co-working, meeting, and collaboration spaces, a virtual reality cave, and various maker spaces. Multi-function spaces, including a colloquium hall and a large seminar space, accommodate active learning, guest speakers, and events.

Tangen Hall’s utilitarian framework and infrastructure allow for programmatic evolution and flexibility to support the inevitable change in user needs. Each level is organized with an efficient bar of core spaces at the right and a 40’-wide column-free zone at the left to support each floor’s destination program. Façade organization is based on a rigorous 10’ grid which enables easy reconfiguration of interior spaces; user groups have the ability to modify their space according to fluctuating spatial requirements and the University can repurpose the building if necessary.

The design focuses on literal transparency that extends the public domain into the building, and vice versa. As a result, the pedestrian at street level exists within the same domain as the entrepreneur rapid prototyping within the maker lab. The façade features a playful and vibrant color gradient panelized within the 10’ module into 5’, 3’, and 2’ sections. As daylight moves across the façade, the color gradient is illuminated in an unpredictable fashion, ranging from vibrant and saturated, to glassy and monochromatic. In a state of continuous transformation, the façade is an outward expression of the evolution occurring inside.