William N. Pennington
Engineering Building

University of Nevada, Reno

The William N. Pennington Engineering Building provides needed space for the growing College of Engineering. The facility includes research laboratories, teaching laboratories, a clean room, a large general-purpose classroom, and administrative space for each department and the Dean of the College. This new facility encourages collaboration within the College as well as providing interaction spaces for students, staff, and faculty by creating a full engineering complex for the UNR campus.

The building is located on the east edge of campus along Evans Avenue immediately south of the Earthquake Laboratory. As the site has a significant elevation change from Evans Avenue on the east down to the existing service drive on the west side of Davidson Math and Science and Palmer Engineering, the four stories are open to the University, but only three stories are visible from Evans Avenue.

The building is composed of two separate blocks, one running parallel to Evans Avenue and the other perpendicular along the north side of the site. This configuration was chosen to allow the building to create a gateway into campus from the east between the two wings. The building is connected on the first, third, and fourth floors, but the second floor is separate providing exterior access from Evans Avenue down to a new plaza on the east side of Palmer Engineering.