CAFE Center

In 2013 Panzica donated conceptual design services to assist Ivy Tech Community College with a proposed re-visioning of the vacant former College Football Hall of Fame Building in downtown South Bend, Indiana. Working with local benefactors Dick and Donna Pfeil, the concept illustrated below imagined the space becoming a regional Culinary Arts & Food Education (“CAFE”) Center. The design took advantage of unique characteristics of the purpose-built museum structure, such as its large open-air pavilion and a spiraling interior access ramp, to integrate multi-level Aquaponics tanks and a domed Hydroponic garden for supplying fresh food to the Culinary program as a functioning demonstrator Urban Aquaponics system. After significant initial progress, input from multiple culinary education and food science interest groups and positive public response, the project was ultimately tabled by inter-governmental and funding factors.