Penn students have improved housing and dining options to look forward to, with a good dose of culture as part of the equation. The university recently completed its $24.5M renovation of the Arts, Research and Culture House (ARCH), a 1928 Gothic Revival building on Locust Walk. The redone ground floor has an open-plan “living room” with banquette seating and glassed-in suites, while there's lounge space on the first floor along with a Tortas Frontera café serving Mexican-American cuisine by Chicago chef Rick Bayless. The ARCH also houses three culture centers: La Casa Latina, Makuu, and the Pan-Asian American Community House.

Besides refurbishing the old, Penn is building brand new a few blocks away: the New College House at Hill Field broke ground in November. At close to 200k SF, the building will house about 350 undergrads in suites with between three and six bedrooms each. There will also be a dining pavilion, seminar rooms, and multipurpose space, continuing the Penn college house tradition of learning, studying, and eating under one roof. (What is this “sleep” of which you earthlings speak?) Want to learn more about university projects? Join us at our national Bisnow Annual Student Housing Summit (we call it BASH for short) May 6 and 7 at the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia. You can register here.