Slated for completion in the spring of 2013, the Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology is a $100M 78K sqft state-of-the-art facility currently being constructed on the 3200 block of Walnut Street on Penn’s campus in University City.

In progress

You can see the sign

The project is designed by New York City architects Weiss/Manfredi, the folks who designed Olympic Sculpture Park at the Seattle Art Museum, and managed by the Rhode Island based Gilbane Building Company. According to a Penn website, workers broke ground at the site last year. Its four major components include a 10K sqft next-generation Cleanroom Facility, which will serve as the new home for the Nanofabrication Facility, a 10K sqft underground Nanocharacterization Facility, a large facility for various measurements, plus general laboratories and other shared facilities.

A look to the future

Another angle, from the corner of 33rd Street

With various projects around 32nd and 33rd Sts., including a new Drexel business school on Market, and plans for a new gateway to University City at Chestnut, and the nearby new Spruce Street Plaza (on, uh, Spruce Street), the entire corridor is changing for the better. In general, Penn has been busy lately shaping city spaces with developments like the aforementioned Spruce Street Plaza, and the recently completed Shoemaker Green. 2012 has been the year for development in University City, which, we suppose leads to the next logical question, what will 2013 bring? Or perhaps better yet, how will these developments impact the area in the next 10 years? 20 years? 50 years?

–Lou Mancinelli