Rice University is located in the Houston Museum
District. It is adjacent to the largest medical complex on the planet, Texas Medical Center, and close to Rice Village.
Rice is also less than ΒΌ of a mile from the Houston Zoo and within walking
distance to Six Flags Astroworld. Among the twenty or so
museums in the district is the Rice University Art Gallery, open during the schoolyear. For access to other parts of the city,
Rice University is served by a light rail station on the Red Line of the
Houston METRORail system. All students at Rice are given an annual Metro pass,
free of charge.Several interdisciplinary research institutes and think tanks are located on the Rice campus, including the Rice Quantum
Institute, the Rice Engineering Design and Development Institute, the Computer and Information Technology Institute, the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology.The campus itself is organized into a number of quadrangles, and features
buildings designed in a style informally called neo-Byzantine. The
Academic Quad is centered on the memorial to William Marsh Rice. It includes the administration buildings, Fondren
Library, and the buildings for physics, languages, architecture, and the humanities. The
Engineering Quad is centered on a
set of three sculptures by Michael Heizer collectively entitled
"45/90/180" and includes buildings for the electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry and computer science
departments. The
Residential Quad is home to a college
system similar to those at Oxford and Cambridge, and the nine residential colleges (Baker, Brown, Hanszen, Jones, Lovett, Martel, Sid Rich, Wiess, Will Rice) act as self-governed social units.Note: During the sometimes heavy rains that impact the Houston area, and the associated flooding that sometimes occurs, the
campus earns the derisive nickname "William Rice Marsh", a play on words using the founder's name.Each residential college has unique traditions, including #Baker 13, Beer Bike, and the #Night of Decadence (also known as NOD). Due in part to the unique traditions of
the college system,
Seventeen magazine named
Rice the "coolest college in the land" in its "Top 100 Coolest Colleges" issue (October 2002).