View of Ronald D. Schmeichel Building for Entrepreneurship and Innovation's main entrance with fall foliage.
View of Ronald D. Schmeichel Building for Entrepreneurship and Innovation's main entrance with fall foliage.

Western University, Ronald D. Schmeichel Building for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

London, Ontario
A facility designed to inspire a new campus-wide culture of entrepreneurship and innovation.

The Ronald D. Schmeichel Building for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (SEIB) provides flexible space for sharing ideas to invent, make, and grow in addition to maker spaces, multi-purpose offices, co-working spaces, and food services. The facility’s articulated building mass, with multiple entrances, gathers students together around a verdant plaza and indoor meeting space. Two discrete wings converge at a central two-storey lobby providing multi-purpose indoor/outdoor space for students and the campus community at large.

Advanced sustainability combines Living Design principles with a net-zero vision for a holistic approach. A high-performance envelope, renewable energy, and efficient mechanical, electrical, and geothermal systems create a durable, regenerative, and healthy design. In turn, SEIB‘s first Life Cycle Assessment shows a 20% embodied carbon reduction.

Articulating a Hybrid Program

The building accommodates two distinct functions—the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Centre and a campus-wide event and conferencing venue—each with its own identity and entrance. Shaped like a boomerang, two wings converge at a double-height central lobby, giving both uses visibility and shared presence in the campus public realm while maintaining a cohesive design language. This layout frames a landscaped forecourt sheltered from prevailing winds and campus traffic, and balances a long, linear entrepreneurship hub with a flexible multi-use event space around a central gathering point.

Parti diagram of SEIB's innovation agora
A Vibrant Heart
SEIB draws students together around a verdant plaza and multipurpose indoor meeting space.
Staircase in entry lobby leading to second floor.
The central two-storey lobby, which arcs around the exterior verdent plaza, creates space for emerging entrepreneurs, industry mentors, and academics to meet, work, and host events.
It’s not just a landmark building with remarkable design and features. It truly marks a transformation for our campus community and positions Western as the best university in Canada for entrepreneurship skills, talent, and research.

Alan Shepard, president, Western University

A multipurpose and 400-person event space
SEIB collects multiple threads of pedestrian movement creating campus-wide convergence around a new culture of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Towards a Net Zero Campus

SEIB is ZCB-Design certified and designed and registered to achieve LEED Gold certification. Design strategies to achieve these certifications include load reduction through a high-performance envelope, electrification of all heating and cooling and renewable energy through rooftop PVs, and an extensive geothermal field in the fore court and laneway. Naturalized, drought resistant landscaping and a storm water bio swale inform the design of the forecourt which echoes the riparian landscape of the nearby Thames River.

The Schmeichel Building for Entrepreneurship and Innovation establishes an important new visual and physical presence on the western edge of campus while simultaneously responding to the university’s historic context.

Andrew Frontini, principal and design director

Interpreting the Campus Vernacular

Western University is known for its collection of collegiate gothic buildings from the 1930s and 40s. Although the campus has many later additions including significant brutalist elements, the campus architect and planning department encouraged architects to address and interpret the collegiate gothic context. The façade composition for SEIB begins with an abstraction and replication of the beveled, cut stone window surrounds of the adjacent law faculty building. The resulting vertical stone louvres provide a sun shading strategy for the west facing principal façade. A rigorous vertical rhythm is then disrupted through the subtraction of frame elements, creating a syncopation that both highlights gathering spaces in the plan and acts as a metaphor for the culture of innovation at Western.

Project Team

Andrew Frontini
People
Andrew Frontini
Safdar Abidi
People
Safdar Abidi
Aimee Drmic
People
Aimee Drmic
Martha del Junco
People
Martha del Junco