Generous gift to fund Prince Lab renovation at Brown, creating the Lassonde Innovation and Design Hub

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - With a $16.75 million gift from the Lassonde Family Foundation, Brown University will launch a full-scale renovation of Prince Lab, transforming the 63-year-old building into a dynamic and central campus hub for project-based learning, cutting-edge research and engineering innovation.

The reimagined space, to be named the Lassonde Innovation and Design Hub, will be home to an expanded and modernized Brown Design Workshop (BDW) - a space for applied learning where students from across campus can design, iterate, collaborate and build just about anything they can dream up. The hub will also include classroom and research laboratory space and serve as home to two School of Engineering master's programs: the master of science in innovation management and entrepreneurship, and the Brown-RISD master of arts in design engineering. Both programs emphasize innovative engineering approaches to solving real world challenges.

"One important hallmark of teaching and research at Brown is unlocking the potential for students and scholars to test new ideas, solve problems and develop novel innovations," said Brown President Christina H. Paxson. "The reimagined Lassonde Innovation and Design Hub will provide a new center for entrepreneurial learning and create new opportunities for Brown students to build community around the creative process. We're deeply grateful to Pierre for his generosity."

Located at 355 Brook St. in Providence, the building is an integral part of Brown's interconnected engineering complex, which comprises the soon-to-be renamed Lassonde Innovation and Design Hub, Barus and Holley, and the state-of-the-art Engineering Research Center.

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Pierre Lassonde said he was drawn to the opportunity to support a project that would have a tangible impact on Brown students now and for generations to come.

"Brown already has a tremendous School of Engineering with wonderful research facilities," Lassonde said. "This project is about truly enhancing the student experience, not only in engineering but throughout the whole community. We want to give students the opportunity to use their talents to the maximum and provide direct experience in creativity and entrepreneurship."

The University is targeting the spring semester of 2026 to begin work on the approximately 18-month renovation, depending on the pace of progress in the design and planning process and construction authorization by Brown's governing board. The renovation will be funded entirely through the generosity of the Lassonde Family Foundation and several additional donors.

Sergio Gonzalez, senior vice president for advancement, expressed gratitude to all of the donors who are contributing to make this transformative project a reality.

"The Lassonde family's deep connection with the University and generous support of our mission demonstrate what philanthropy can make possible at Brown," he said. "Their early leadership gift inspired many others in our community to join in. The Lassonde Innovation and Design Hub will expand hands-on, experiential learning opportunities for our students and strengthen Brown's position as a leader in design engineering education."

Educating makers and problem-solvers

Since its construction in 1962, the 59,000 square-foot Prince Lab has been a key research space for physics and engineering. In 2014, the building took on a new life with the launch of the Brown Design Workshop. From its humble beginnings offering some second-hand woodworking tools, a laser cutter and a few 3D printers, the BDW has grown into a gathering place where students and faculty from many academic programs come to create anything from robots to race cars, and space satellites to sundial sculptures.

"In the School of Engineering, we embrace a learning-by-doing approach where we can model, make and iterate," said Tejal Desai, dean of engineering. "We integrate that ethos into everything we do, and nowhere is that on display more prominently than in the Brown Design Workshop. I'm so excited for our students to experience this reinvigorated space and to see everything they'll create as a result of it."

The renovation will optimize the use of space in the BDW, increasing its capacity and the number of student and faculty makers, engineers, entrepreneurs and artists who will be able to use it. In addition to making the space more functional, another goal is to make it more visible to curious passersby. The redesigned building will include windowed wall systems that give community members a chance to see the kind of work that happens in the BDW. Exterior updates, including large windows and a more prominent main entrance, will make the structure more inviting from the outside. Ultimately, the plan is to make the Lassonde Innovation and Design Hub a gathering place for students from across campus to meet and collaborate.

"Older academic buildings were organized around classrooms as the focus of educational experience," said University Architect Craig Barton. "We know that for our students, learning goes on inside and outside of the classroom, and the new space is designed to reflect this idea."

The new design will be sensitive to the challenges of creating a workshop that is also a learning space.

"Sometimes students need a place to talk about their work outside of the noise of the buzzsaw and away from flying sawdust," Barton said. "The design of the new BDW creates spaces that sit outside of the fabrication floor, not just to be pathways to get from one end of the building to the other, but actually to make places where students can talk and collaborate."

The project will also expand the building's current mezzanine space by 4,000 square feet. The expanded mezzanine will house spaces for master's programs, featuring new instructional and studio spaces, conference rooms, collaboration areas and accommodations for visiting "makers-in-residence."

The building will continue to house an aeromechanics wind tunnel, a key facility for use in research led by Professor of Engineering Kenny Breuer and Brown researchers from a wide range of programs. The overall renovation will also include space use that promotes increased safety, high-efficiency heating and ventilation systems, and accessibility improvements throughout the building, including an elevator.

To lead a design process to turn that vision into reality, Brown has chosen Page Architects, a nationally recognized firm with offices around the world, including in Boston.

"Page understood from early on that for the project to be successful, it would need to meet the operational logic required to allow space to function efficiently but to also address the characteristics of a building that will serve as a gathering place," Barton said. "They have been great team members in providing clear, concise assessments of how we can meet these key criteria and make best use of the available space."

Shawmut Design and Construction will serve as the lead contractor, pending construction authorization.

Investing in entrepreneurship

Pierre Lassonde is co-founder and chairman emeritusof Franco-Nevada Corporation, one of the largest publicly traded mining and energy royalty companies in North America.

As a philanthropist, he has been a generous supporter of integrating entrepreneurship into education, including at his alma maters - the University of Utah, and Polytechnique Montreal in his native Canada. An avid supporter of the arts, Lassonde has served as chairman of the Musée National des Beaux Arts du Québec and the Canadian Council for the Arts. He is the recipient of honorary doctorates from several institutions in Canada and U.S. and was appointed to the Order of Canada, one of the nation's highest civilian honors, in 2002.

As the parent of two Brown students and grandparent of one, Lassonde says he has come to appreciate how Brown's Open Curriculum encourages students to find their passions. That openness creates the right atmosphere for students to find their own paths - including when that involves inventing a path that didn't exist before.

"Brown students are ahead of just about everybody else in terms of starting new businesses and using their minds to create new intellectual property," Lassonde said. "That creates new value for the world, which is what I've tried to support both in my business career and in my philanthropic work."

It was Pierre Lassonde's daughter Julie, who holds two degrees from Brown and is chair of the University's School of Engineering Board of Governors, who first brought the idea of supporting the reimagining of Prince Lab to the Lassonde Family Foundation.

"When Dean Desai took me on a tour of the BDW and told me about her vision for it, I was all in," said Julie Lassonde, who holds a Brown executive MBA and a master's of integrative studies. "It has this incredible cross-pollination of people and ideas. You have students from art, history, political science and elsewhere meeting and talking with engineers. It just creates an incredible spark, and that's why I loved the innovation and design hub concept."

Pierre Lassonde says as he considers the possibilities the renovated space will enable, he looks forward to learning in the years ahead how the new space has benefitted students, academically and professionally.

"I would love for students to write to me in five years saying, 'I had this idea in the workshop one day and now I've started a company,'" he said. "That's how you change people's lives. That's what we're trying to do."

Desai says that the vision for the Lassonde Innovation and Design Hub is a perfect fit with the interdisciplinary and people-centered approach of Brown's School of Engineering.

"There's not a problem in the world today that is solved from a single discipline or perspective," Desai said. "Progress is made by empowering people with different experiences to collaborate on new ventures. With this gift, Brown's capacity to do that has grown exponentially. We're tremendously grateful and excited to see what the future will hold."