Fabrication Center

Prairie View A&M Fabrication Design Center is a new facility for the School of Architecture. This innovative space will house a variety of equipment allowing students to build, develop and test ideas. The building is divided into digital fabrication space and conventional fabrication space, and assembling space. Students will be able to use multiple methods and equipment to build their work. This state of the art facility will house the latest technology in laser cutters, CNC routers, wood and metal tools as well as 3D printers. The intent is for the process of modeling and construction to be done in one location offering opportunities of peer-to- peer learning, collaboration and cross-disciplinary interaction.

The Fabrication Center is conceived by Kirksey Architects as an elevated plane that references the “prairie.” This plane hovers over the exterior brick walls allowing light to filter into the space. The brick exterior walls reference the extrusion of the plane by revealing the earth’s strata. The entrance, deeply recessed, creates covered outdoor gathering space, while the landscape embraces the building thus creating uncovered gathering space. The building is divided pro-grammatically into three areas; shops, assembly and digital fabrication. As the faculty, students and visitors moves through the space, light monitors and clerestory windows offer illumination and connection to the sky. The interior walls of the assembly space are for exhibiting projects and information so that students can display and learn from them. This new and exciting facility was opened on February, 2019 and inspires School of Architecture students and their work, not only by providing an unconventional model space, but also housing state of the art equipment.