Ralph S. O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science opening marks ‘beginning of new era at Rice’

The Ralph S. O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science is designed with a deliberate focus on fostering collaboration in four key research areas: advanced materials, quantum science and computing, urban research and innovation, and the energy transition.
At 250,000 square feet, the O’Connor building is the largest research facility in the university’s historic core campus (second largest overall). The building design maximizes laboratory space and promotes interdisciplinary research and innovation through open, inviting collaboration spaces. The common areas feature a lobby and a café, and the top level boasts a multi-purpose event space and outdoor terrace with an iconic view of Rice campus and the city beyond.
Ralph S. O’Connor was an urbane graduate of Johns Hopkins University who never attended Rice. But after he moved to Houston to pursue a career in the energy industry, he fell in love with the Rice campus, became deeply involved with the university and ultimately became one of the most generous donors in its history.
Rice has received $57 million from the estate of O’Connor, who died in December 2018. It is the largest donation from an estate in the university’s history, and it is expected ultimately to be more than $60 million. When added to his previous gifts to the university, O’Connor’s lifetime and estate donations to Rice total $85 million.
“I think it’s important to give, because we’re all in the same boat together,” O’Connor once said. “I think it makes you feel good. What are you going to do with it if you don’t give it away? Sit on it? It’s not going to hatch.”
The firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the Ralph S. O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science. The project is designed to require remarkably low operational carbon for a laboratory facility. The building’s envelope synthesizes environmentally conscious design strategies with the campus’s distinct architectural identity-historically composed of Byzantine style and Mediterranean Revival architecture.
The Ralph S O’Connor Engineering & Science Building is SOM’s third opportunity to work with Rice University, following their work as structural engineers of James Turrell’s Twilight Epiphany (2012), and as architects of the Bioscience Research Collaborative Building (2009), which bridges the Rice University and the Texas Medical Center campuses.
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