A New Home for Interdisciplinary Studies at Boston College

The new Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society (IISS) at Boston College is scheduled to begin construction this summer with an expected completion in 2021. Following a Master Plan led by Payette in 2012, the new building will accommodate a new General Engineering degree program and growing research initiatives at Boston College.

Connecting to Higgins Hall, the new five-story, 156,500 SF building will provide dedicated space for interdisciplinary studies for the liberal arts education and all academic disciplines at Boston College. The IISS is defined by a continuous ribbon of collaboration spaces and offices wrapping the entirety of its perimeter, forming a Collaboration Commons around a high-tech core. The Collaboration Commons is a nested series of interaction spaces which have an umbilical relationship with makerspaces, classrooms, robotics, teaching labs and research activities, allowing for through-building transparency at a grand scale and blurring the boundaries between spaces.

Boston College has a strong interest in entrepreneurship on campus, and the Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship will give students the space to take their businesses from idea to launch. The new maker spaces will be open to all students and faculty and will provide tools for users of all experience levels. These spaces are located on the most public floor of the building, next to the main entrance and general purpose classrooms. Together, they activate the floor and attract students from all majors to collaborate on a wide range of projects.

Learn more about where the different classrooms and laboratories will be located in the Boston College newspaper, The BC Heights article. You can also check out the recent Boston Globe article on the new new Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.