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Lassonde Studios
Lassonde Studios
RISE Representation (Courtesy: Hunt Development Group)
Rendering of the RISE roof (Courtesy: Hunt Development Group/Pacific Asia Design Group)
RISE lobby rendering (Courtesy: Hunt Development Group/Pacific Asia Design Group)
Link to video and sound (details below): https://tinyurl.com/yj2rsk2p
The state-of-the-art innovation and entrepreneurship center/student housing facility scheduled to open in August on the University of Hawaii campus at Manoa is expected to be a catalyst for student-led entrepreneurial activity. The $70 million Residences for Innovative Student Entrepreneurs (RISE) is modeled after Lassonde Studios, a University of Utah student housing and innovation facility.
“It’s going to change your campus,” said Troy D’Ambrosio, executive director of the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute. “It will change people’s lives. It will be a transformative experience for people who go through that program and take advantage of the resources there.”
The five-story Lassonde Studios features a 20,000-square-foot innovation space on the ground floor to connect, test ideas, build prototypes, launch companies, and learn by doing. The top four floors house 400 resident students. RISE is a six-story live-learn-work facility, with a 10,000-square-foot innovation space on the bottom floor equipped with multi-purpose co-working, meeting, and maker spaces. The top five floors will house 374 resident students.
The Pacific Asian Entrepreneurship Center (PACE) at UH Manoa’s Shidler College of Business will operate the entrepreneurship program at RISE. PACE members have made multiple trips to Lassonde Studios. D’Ambrosio has been working closely with PACE and has visited the Manoa campus.
“Lassonde Studios, that’s the pioneer in live-learn-work communities and he (D’Ambrosio) shared his playbook and we followed suit,” said PACE Executive Director Sandra Fujiyama. “We were able to take all that he has done to not have to reinvent the wheel, and take his lessons learned and implement them into RISE so that we can provide this opportunity for our students.”
That includes the various programs that will be offered at RISE and the design of the facility itself, including the makerspaces, recording studio, incubation, and other collaborative spaces along with furnishings and equipment. PACE also wants to replicate Lassonde’s success by making students feel like the facility is “their space.”
“They’re taking the attitude that we take here, which is: ‘What do you want to do as a student as an entrepreneur? What do you want to do on campus? What things will make it easier and better for you to get involved and find other students to be entrepreneurs with?’” D’Ambrosio said.
Current and future students at any of the 10 UH campuses can apply. For more information and to apply beginning Fall 2023, visit the RISE website.
Hawai’i student at Lassonde
One of RISE’s goals is to offer local students a UH experience that, prior to RISE, could only be found on the mainland.
A 2021 Kauaʻi High School graduate, Javis Agreda chose the University of Utah because of Lassonde Studios and the resources and programs that support his strategic communications and information systems majors.
Agreda lives on the Lassonde tech and gaming floor and said the whole community is very welcoming and supportive. Agreda said that if RISE opened when he graduated from high school, he would have considered attending UH Manoa.
“Having an institution and a program like that to support me, I think I would incredibly consider it even more knowing that an institution wants to support me in whatever endeavor I want to undertake,” Agreda said.
RISE is being built under a public-private partnership between UH, the UH Foundation, and the Hunt Development Group. RISE is funded entirely by private money that does not come from taxpayers. For more see this UH News history.
Link to video and sound (details below): https://tinyurl.com/yj2rsk2p
VIDEO:
BROLL: (1:54)
0:00-1:34: Lossonde Studios interior and exterior, including student life, events, activities and living space
1:35-1:38: RISE external representation (Courtesy: Hunt Development Group)
1:39-1:46: Interior renderings of RISE (Courtesy: AHL)
1:47-1:54: RISE platform and lobby renderings (Courtesy: Hunt Development Group/Pacific Asia Design Group)
SOUND FRAGMENTS:
Troy D’Ambrosio, Executive Director of the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute (0:12)
“It’s going to change your campus. It will change individual lives. It will be a transformative experience for people who go through that program and take advantage of the resources there.”
Sandra Fujiyama, Executive Director, UH Manoa Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (0:16)
“We’re really trying to create that similar feeling here at UH. We want to be the one stop shop for our students who are creators, problem solvers, change makers who really want to make a difference. We want to make it easy for them by giving them an all-in-one space under one roof.”
