What’s Going on in There? Inside the CITE Game Innovation Lab Construction
Within days of completing the first renovation project of a 10-year plan to transform its Brooklyn campus, Polytechnic Institute of NYU started its next.
Construction began on the new project, the Center of Innovation for Technology and Entertainment (CITE), in early October on the first floor of the Dibner Building and is expected to be completed by late winter/early spring.
Like Project 2010, the first renovation initiative of the 10-year i2e Campus Transformation, CITE, designed by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, will be a showcase of NYU-Poly’s invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship philosophy — what it calls “i2e.” Its centerpiece will be the Game Innovation Lab, a place, according to its research director, Dr. Katherine Isbister, “that will bring together some of NYU-Poly's strongest researchers and their students across multiple departments (Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Humanities and Social Sciences), taking games as an innovation challenge.”
Dr. Isbister explains that “games are profound drivers of both technological and user experience innovation, and we have deep expertise at NYU-Poly that can extend and transform what's already happening in this exciting field.”
Vice President of Finance and Business Affairs Dennis Dintino said that the CITE project’s goals include creating a flexible space, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and facilitating “the meeting of the top-down theory of science and engineering with bottom-up tinkering and problem-solving.”
The gaming lab’s interior will be a 3000-square-foot, open space with a technical grid to create integrated teaching and research areas with projection, large shared monitors, moveable smart boards, and moveable, modular furnishings. It will also feature a state-of-the-art Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)/ Video Quality Lab. A high-tech “living room” will give researchers and students a comfortable place to evaluate and discuss prototypes and showcase their work.
Some of that work will be exhibited on CITE’s exterior wall via a 12.6’ wide by 5.2’ high media display. People in the Dibner Building and MetroTech Plaza will be able to see and interact with the display. Windows in the wall directly beside the display will further enhance the lab’s connection to the outside world, and vice versa.
An expert team of NYU-Poly digital media, computer science, and electrical engineering faculty members are leading the CITE project. Consistent with other campus transformation-related initiatives, CITE’s governance system encourages input from the NYU-Poly community. To share your ideas or feedback, send an email to: transformation@poly.edu.
