Building the Future: The SHED

Rendering of the students walking under the bridge of the new Student Hall for Exploration and Development.
 

Building the Future

The SHED

Creativity and innovation

On display, every day

RIT students’ passion for technology, the arts, and design will be on display every day in the anticipated Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED). The creative hub, scheduled to open in fall 2023, will centralize the university’s makerspace and performing arts studios and theaters. The sprawling facility is RIT’s largest construction project since the Henrietta campus opened in 1968.

Rendering of The SHED.

The SHED will transform the center of campus and put a spotlight on RIT students’ creative collaboration. The complex will house maker- and project team spaces, dance studios, rehearsal rooms, and performing arts theatres.

Student work will flow into the public spaces and passersby will see the activity from glass bridges connecting the SHED to Monroe Hall and Wallace Library on either side. Renovations to Wallace Library on each floor will create portals to the SHED and a sense of one building flowing into the next.

A rendering showing the outside of the SHED as seen when walking up the Quarter Mile.

Take a walk through the SHED

A rendering of what the Student Hall for Exploration and Development will look like from the South.

The SHED from the South

A rendering of the inside of the connection between the Wallace Library and the SHED.

Wallace Library connected to the SHED

The Inspiration and Gifts

RIT Board of Trustee member, Austin McChord receiving a round of applause.

RIT Trustee and 2009 alumnus Austin McChord, founder of Datto, a Connecticut-based data protection company, envisioned a new makerspace and learning complex  on campus that would foster creativity and entrepreneurship at RIT. This space has become the SHED. 

McChord’s 2017 record gift of $50 million to RIT includes $17.5 million to build the collaborative learning complex. Financing through the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York will offset the construction costs, which will exceed $100 million.

Frank and Ruth Sklarsky.

RIT alumnus and trustee Frank Sklarsky ’78 and his wife, Ruth, made a significant gift of $2.5 million to establish the Sklarsky Glass Box Theater.

Philip Wehrheim and his wife Anne, posing for a photo with James Winebrake.

A gallery dedicated to RIT’s partnership with the Genesee Country Village & Museum on the first floor of the SHED will showcase university-wide research and scholarship from the partnership. RIT alumnus Philip Wehrheim (’66, business) and his wife, Anne, endowed the RIT-GCV&M partnership in 2019 with a $1.3 million gift, a portion of which is supporting the exhibition space.

Special Features

The Boston-based firm William Rawn Associates Architects Inc. designed The SHED.

The SHED will cover more than 120,000 square feet of new construction as well as more than 83,000 square feet of renovations in Wallace Library and Monroe Hall. The total project will exceed 200,000 gross square feet of combined renovated and new construction. The design includes natural spaces, a courtyard, and landscaped passages weaving through the building and under a glass bridge.

The SHED will house individual rehearsal spaces, a large dance instruction studio, and a music rehearsal studio. A black-box/glass-box theater seating 180 will be reconfigurable to control the light entering the facility.

Jonathan Dharmadi, a fourth-year new media design student from Elmhurst, N.Y., won a student competition to name the SHED. McChord requested that students name the facility to make it their own.

Rendering of the interior of an active classroom in the SHED.

Instructional space within the SHED and Wallace Library will create 27 new classroom spaces with over 1,500 additional seats. This includes 22 standard-size classrooms, seating 30-60, and five extra-large classrooms, each seating over 140. All of the new classrooms will feature cutting edge video technology to increase accessibility, large format projection screens, and flexible furniture allowing nearly endless configurations for group work, lectures, symposiums, and special events.

Learn about teaching in the SHED and Wallace classrooms – where flexible furniture, state-of-the-art technology, and your pedagogical creativity come together to advance student inclusivity and learning at RIT!

David Munson

David C. Munson Jr.
President

The SHED will be the place where prospective students and their parents will stop by and, in just five or 10 minutes, say, “Oh, this is RIT,” and see that it is different from almost every other institution.

They will see students working together on projects and studying together in other parts of the facilities. They are going to see a lot of people carrying musical instruments around and there will be performances and making of all different types. There is no other university that has this type of integrated facility that is not just a set of machine tools and shop equipment. It’s way more than that.”

Key Websites

A rendering of the Glass Box Theatre.

Virtual Tour and Naming Opportunities

RIT students playing the violin and flute on stage.

Performing Arts at RIT

News

  • June 6, 2023

    four actors on a stage, with two on top of a box labeled toys.

    RIT/NTID and School of Performing Arts present 2023-2024 theatrical season

    The 2023-2024 theatrical season featuring a partnership between RIT’s School of Performing Arts and NTID's Department of Performing Arts will include a celebration of Deaf rap and hip hop, an adaptation of Hamlet, a multimedia dance production, and several immersive theatrical performances, among others.

  • May 4, 2023

    graphic featuring Tiffany Brodner, executive director, Student Hall of Exploration and Development.

    Tiffany Brodner assumes new role as executive director of the SHED

    Tiffany Brodner was named RIT’s inaugural executive director of the Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED), following a national search. She assumed her new position in April. She will work closely with Michael Buffalin IV, who was appointed director of RIT’s makerspace within the SHED.

  • April 25, 2023

    three college students singing on stage with playbills flying through the air.

    Where STEM and the Arts Live in Harmony 

    Inside Higher Ed features RIT’s Performing Arts Scholarship program and talks to student Mia Clarizio, School of Performing Arts Director Erica Haskell, and RIT President David Munson.