Town Center

Envision a large, sun-filled atrium with a coffee bar, a restaurant featuring locally grown produce, winter gardens, secluded conversation nooks, a living room, niches with hands-on opportunities to experience science and plenty of quiet places for thinking and informal meetings. Add a flexible auditorium space, water walls, interactive lighting designs, tantalizing aromas from bakery ovens, and an old-fashioned soda fountain serving malts, local farmstead cheese sandwiches and fresh ice cream.

All of these things will be part of the "Town Center" occupying the ground floor of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery building. Creating a "Town Center" in a cutting-edge research facility is a bold strategy, and the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery is a one-of-a-kind venue bringing an expansive and vibrant dedicated public space into an exciting research setting. The mission of the Town Center is to serve as a crossroads of ideas for the academic, business and public communities in the midst of a world class research university.

Designed to enhance opportunities for the kinds of chance encounters and serendipitous events that can lead to the unexpected, the Town Center is an integral part of a building that is intended to be more than a research facility. It's designed to be a "relationship incubator" that fosters the social interaction that will be the life blood of the collaborative interdisciplinary research mission of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. Everything in the building is designed to be interactive, educational, changeable, and dynamic.

The state-of-the-art facility not only brings together scientists from a wide range of disciplines, but also serves as a venue for exploring the interface between the sciences and the arts and humanities, as well as pursuing interactions with education and social science researchers.  In addition to prompting new connections between academics, the Town Center will be a convenient and centralized entry point for the business community to meet with university and community members to explore mutually beneficial partnerships.

The Town Center also is a hub for science-based education and engagement with learners of all ages. Interactive “discovery niches,” programs, lectures, classes and demonstrations are specially designed for school groups, families venturing onto campus, professionals seeking to expand their skill sets and those seeking lifelong learning opportunities.

Inquisitive minds of every kind will find something engaging in this space, whether its perusing an art exhibit, working on an interactive science display, attending a talk by a world famous researcher, listening to classical music composed by a chemist, sampling locally sourced organic cuisine at a cooking demonstration, or just sitting quietly in a living replica of a prehistoric tropical forest listening to the cadence of running water. The Town Center will invite all who come to explore, inquire and DISCOVER.

_{The Town Center is owned and operated by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), an independent, non-profit foundation chartered to support research at the UW-Madison and the designated technology transfer organization for the university.}