UC San Diego on Thursday broke ground on the $67 million Design and Innovation Building, the first piece of the “grand entrance,” a sweeping project that’s meant to provide a clear, dynamic doorway for the county’s largest university.

The 74,000-square-foot building will provide everything from classrooms to studios to makers space for the school’s small but fast-growing design and innovation programs.

DIB, as the building will be known, will be located next to the Blue Line Trolley station at Pepper Canyon. The public will be able to peer into DIB’s work spaces as they enter and leave the station. DIB also will feature a restaurant that’s meant, in part, to lure the public to campus.

The grand entrance also will feature a large plaza, artwork, housing for 1,400 students, and an outdoor amphitheater that will be able to seat 2,000 people. The plaza will link to Rupertus Lane and provide students and visitors with a clearer path to the university’s interior.


The project is being promoted by UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla, who told the Union-Tribune earlier this year, “Anybody who comes to San Diego should have this campus as a destination in addition to Balboa Park or the Gaslamp district.”

He added on Thursday that UCSD wants to “really open ourselves up to the broader community and not just think of ourselves as an elitist institution on the mesa.”

Just over five years ago, Khosla recruited Don Norman, one of the nation’s most respected design experts, to lead the new program.

Norman, who is now 83, served for a while as director of research at Apple and is widely known for his views on the purpose of design and innovation.


“Design should attack critical societal problems, such as disease, homelessness, a lack of food and access to education,” Norman said Thursday. “Innovation involves finding ways to implement change, to get things done.”

DIB’s early projects will likely include micro-mobility, machines and systems that help people move and navigate. The issue has become a major problem at UCSD due to the university’s rapid growth. The school’s enrollment soared to nearly 40,000 this fall, and students, faculty and vehicles are clogging streets and pathways. DIB will look for ways to ease congestion.