In fall 2021, Pratt Institute announced the establishment of the Research Yard.
A joint initiative with CUNY City Tech and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the advanced research and applied learning facility will connect faculty and students from both Pratt and City Tech with the Yard’s ecosystem of more than 500 businesses.
The 40,000-square-foot space in the Navy Yard’s historic eleven-story Building 3 will be home to all of Pratt’s research centers and include fabrication labs as well as research areas for the study of robotics, information visualization, sustainability, community development, environmental sensing, design incubation in rural areas, and digital archeology, along with a number of accelerators. The space, formerly a warehouse and fulfillment center, will be transformed by architectural firm Smith-Miller + Hawkinson, LLP, into a 21st-century industry-education research model supporting the creative economy.
The Pratt research groups that will be based out of the new facility and will support community-based initiatives include: Pratt’s Consortium for Research and Robotics, the Pratt Center for Community Development, the Pratt Sustainability Center, the Spatial Analysis and Visualization Initiative, and the Research Accelerator program. Pratt students, faculty, and staff will gain hands-on experience collaborating with industry professionals on site. Additionally, Pratt and City Tech students, faculty, and staff will work with the Brooklyn Navy Yard STEAM Center, a career and technical training high school for 11th- and 12th-grade students who come from eight Brooklyn public high schools.
“Building this advanced creative research facility just blocks from the Pratt campus and alongside the businesses and entrepreneurs at the Brooklyn Navy Yard is crucial for New York City, and especially for the borough of Brooklyn,” said President Frances Bronet. “The Research Yard of Pratt Institute, City Tech, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard will further enable our research leaders to work with the local community on today’s important challenges.”
The first half of the facility is expected to open in the fall of 2022, followed by the second half in the summer or fall of 2023.