The ‘heart of the building’ is the second-floor makerspace, where students take their ideas from classes and meetings and turn them into reality.
From the outside, the GIX building in Bellevue’s Spring District seems like it could be any other state-of-the-art higher education building. But inside, where traditional classrooms coexist with the kind of conference-style “huddle rooms” you might expect to see at a tech startup, and a giant makerspace complete with 3D printers, laser cutters and a woodshop, you might start to get the idea that this isn’t just any building of higher education.
The program this building holds, like the space itself, is brand new: University of Washington and Tsinghua University’s experimental venture into an international graduate program that works closely with business and technology companies to teach students who are interested in…
