First Floor (Design & Merchandising, Music Industry, Arts Administration and Entertainment & Arts Management)

Through the Market Street entrance of the URBN Center students, faculty, staff, families and guests will enter into a large main lobby featuring a prominent digital media screen, displays of student work, lounges and informal meeting areas, and a café.  The office of Student Services will be located directly across from the main entrance, adjacent to an all-college Hybrid Making Studio.  This space will provide students access for designing, drawing, sharing and manufacturing using such tools as laser cutters, rapid prototyping 3D printers, large scale fabric and paper plotters, computer workstations and traditional hand tools.

Up Front Spaces:
The main lobby will also spotlight the enterprise homes of our students in Music Industry and Design & Merchandising.  Music Industry’s Mad Dragon Enterprises will gain office, operations and seminar space accessible from the main lobby, and Design & Merchandising Students will have a highly-visible storefront display window in which to practice the craft, business and design skills of visual merchandising to complement the on-line D&M store.  These ‘up-front’ spaces will be matched with instructional spaces for these programs as well as Entertainment & Arts Management and our graduate Arts Administration programs.

The Drexel Historic Costume Collection:
Our invaluable Historic Costume Collection will have a unified home with facilities for conservation, preservation, instruction, storage and display. The light- and humidity-controlled vitrines will provide unprecedented exposure to a changing display of our unique collection for students in Fashion Design and other majors, as well as to visitors of the URBN Center. 

Second Floor (Digital Media, Animation & Visual Effects, Game Art & Production, Web Development & Interaction Design and Product Design):
On the second floor and the second mezzanine, undergraduate and graduate students in Digital Media, Animation & Visual Effects, Game Art & Production and Web Development & Interaction Design will take advantage of a large motion capture studio, compositing lab, gaming research facility and multiple high-end computer studios for animation, modeling and interactive design. 

Our new and expanding Product Design major’s spaces will include a model-making/prototyping shop complete with tools and space to professionally create anything innovative our students would want to create.  Throughout the URBN Center, spaces have been designed to be adaptable and flexible, but nowhere more so than in Product Design where we anticipate each class of students to take ownership of the spaces and redesign the layouts and uses to best suit the challenges of the moment

Third Floor (Fashion, and Architecture & Interiors):
Re-locating to the third floor offers the undergraduate and graduate Fashion Design programs expanded reconfigurable studio space, sewing labs and a CAD design studio, but it will also feature a fabric dying and printing studio, a fashionable technology research lab, a computerized knit prototyping studio, and runway for class critiques and informal fashion shows.  This will also be the new location of the Charles Evans Fashion Library.

Architecture and Interiors have had facilities scattered across multiple locations on campus for as many years as they’ve been in existence.  With the move to the URBN Center the design studios, drawing studio, CAD labs, printing and plotting facilities, resource library and model making shop will all be located together.  The co-location of our day and evening Architecture programs with our undergraduate and graduate Interiors programs will foster collaborations and more efficient and balanced use of space throughout the day and night.

Fourth Floor (Graphic Design, Architecture & Interiors):
The fourth floor will house Graphic Design.  Students and faculty will enjoy 24-hour access to expanded and upgraded facilities for their computer studios and a large open lab.  Our celebrated Polish Poster Collection will have a proper home for archiving and display, and the ever-expanding graphic library will have adequate space for reference and research.

The URBN Center Annex:
The URBN Center Annex, located at3401 Filbert Street, will feature Westphal College’s public venues including a greatly expanded Leonard Pearlstein Gallery as well as a black box theater and a 125-seat screening room intended to have the best sound and projection in Philadelphia.

Inside The URBN Center:
Woven throughout the entire URBN Center will be faculty offices; conference and seminar rooms; a multimedia lecture hall/screening room; extensive pin-up space for critique and sharing of student work; student lounges; and flexible “opportunity spaces.”  A basic tenet of the design is to provide opportunity for observation and collaboration.  Students and faculty in all these majors being exposed to each other’s disciplines and creative work and sharing spaces for designing, making and presenting work will doubtlessly see and seize new opportunities for cross-fertilization.