NAC|Architecture - On the Boards: Architects, Seattle, Spokane, Los Angeles, Denver

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On the Boards:

Northside Residence Hall, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington; The newly designed five-story Northside Residence Hall at Washington State University is student housing that enhances WSU’s Residence Life program and is intended to increase student retention. The NAC|Architecture design concept meets the budget goals of a modern major university yet also possesses quality benchmarks that recognize the need for a long service life and enhanced energy performance. Each floor is home to 75 residents, but is then sub-divided into a West community of 37 and an East community of 38. Variety of room size, type and layout are available on each of the upper floors of the building, and the layout is repeated to created economies with the building services. Shared amenities include a large-volume rec room, living room, outdoor courtyard and rooftop terrace.

Patterson Hall Renovation, Eastern Washington University, Cheney, Washington; NAC|Architecture recently completed design for the comprehensive renovation of Patterson Hall, the largest general classroom building on the campus of Eastern Washington University. When complete, Patterson Hall will house 44 classrooms, 165 faculty offices, two computer labs and a forensics lab. The project is designed to attain minimum LEED Gold certification. NAC|Architecture previously completed the pre-design study for the project, which included developing the program, site and cost analyses, master plan and policy coordination, technology demands, facility operations and maintenance requirements, and phased-construction considerations. Patterson Hall is currently under construction.

Benewah Medical Center, Coeur d'Alene Tribe - Plummer, Idaho: Construction has begun on the new, 50,000-sf Benewah Medical Center in Plummer, Idaho, located on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation. Opening in the fall of 2012, the center will serve both tribal members and local community members, which is a unique model for a Tribal-owned community health center. Designed by NAC|Architecture to achieve LEED Silver, the building celebrates the Tribe’s relationship to the land, appearing to rise from the earth as a natural formation using natural materials from the local environment. A roof garden not only provides comfortable outdoor space for the staff and community, but also provide expansion space for future growth. The Rotunda in the center of the building represents a gathering place for the community to come together to celebrate the culture and traditions of the Tribe. Walker Construction is the general contractor on the project.

Vine Hall, University of Arizona , Tucson, Arizona: In programming work with the University of Arizona, it became clear that the demand for eco-living had outstripped the level anticipated as the next generation of University of Arizona students brings ever heightened awareness of the use of resources. The Vine Project was conceived to address their demands and serve as a pilot project for the next generation of progressive student residence design, targeting energy savings so far in excess of current LEED design standards that the concept of a Living Building was brought on to provide a new benchmark. Consisting of 12 student communities of 17 students, fully-composted and a net energy exporter, Vine Hall is viewed to be a self-governing entity on the campus, very likely tied to the Environmental College in its curriculum and host to groups within and outside its walls who share an interest in environmental issues. The project recycles all components of the existing residence hall on-site. Vine Residence Hall’s Life-of-Water diagram takes in only storm water and refines all other site water to achieve Net Zero water use. It makes use of special systems and on-site renewables to reduce net electrical demand to zero. Architecturally, the building has a 2-story pedagogical building available to the public, with a 6-story residential building joined to it where the students would live.

Snohomish High School Modernization, Snohomish School District, Snohomish, Washington; Snohomish School District - Snohomish, Washington; The project pursues the transformation of the school, through the definition and emphasis of “negative space” and the incorporation of “texture”, to reveal coherence and readability out of the disorder of the existing campus. The challenge was that of an existing campus comprising 17 individual buildings constructed over 16 different building campaigns. The campus was first established in the 1930’s and is the “heart and soul” of the community. The goal of the project was to create a comprehensive master plan providing coherence and the desired educational relationships for critical functions, while maintaining respect for the historical context and community “memory” of the school. The use of brick became a clear mandate as a historical link, a memory. The approach was in two parts. First, organize the new and existing buildings around coherent exterior space, and secondly, provide identity, memory, and assist way-finding by utilizing brick architectural markers at circulation and gathering points. Negative space, connectors, and “texture” markers were abstracted and overlayed on the site plan. New buildings, on the west, were designed to work with the existing buildings, on the east, to create well defined exterior space. The result is a re-configuration of buildings into a coherent and functional whole, using the existing qualities of the campus and creating a purposeful learning environment.

Cheney Elementary School, Cheney Public Schools, Cheney, Washington; NAC| Architecture is currently designing the new elementary school for Cheney School District to be constructed on a 10-acre site in a high-growth area on the outskirts of the city. The school’s design is influenced by the architectural vernacular of the barns that are prevalent in the surrounding farm land. The building’s massing and roof forms derive their gables and lofts from these structures, and the composition of materials similarly borrows proportions, textural imagery and color palettes. The total building area is 55,500 square feet for 500 students and includes the following spaces:
Fifteen classrooms for grades one through five
Three kindergarten classrooms
One pre-school classroom
One project room
Four breakout pod spaces
A music room that doubles as a stage on the multi-purpose room/cafeteria
A full service production kitchen
Two special-education/ resource rooms and associated support spaces
A library/media center
A gymnasium
Various educational and building support facilities

Medical Office Building, Bellevue, Washington: This project posits a conceptual design for a new medical office building in an area of a city being rezoned to higher density. Although adjacent to the downtown core, this area currently houses single-story suburban office buildings surrounded with surface parking. Future planning allows construction to a maximum height of five stories and calls for the area to be served by a major public transportation hub. As the first project within the new zoning allowance, the MOB finds its form in response to the anticipated increases in building and pedestrian density and the general “urbanization” of the area. Project goals are to: transform the typology of medical office buildings to serve as a catalyst for meaningful “city making,” transcend the limits of traditional building and site design for medical office buildings, and propose a new paradigm of fully engaged urban design.

Campus Classroom Building, Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane, Washington: The new 54,000-square-foot Campus Classroom Building, which will earn LEED Silver certification at minimum, occupies a prominent site at SFCC. The building is designed as two perpendicular, contrasting wings to complement and enhance important features of the campus. A more dominant, transparent classroom wing of glass, concrete and metal panel visually connects the building’s interior teaching and learning environments with the rest of the campus by its location adjacent to the major pedestrian walk linking the campus together. A contrasting, more academic, primarily brick wing houses the campus administration, a tutoring center, service learning center and community engagement offices. The east façade of this more traditional brick architecture defines one side of a new campus quad that terminates at the existing library.

Bellevue High School, Bellevue School District - Bellevue, Washington: The design focus of the new Bellevue High School was to celebrate sustainability through harmony with nature. The new entry icon set this tone as it is a cascading waterfall of roof water that spills into a rain garden between two planes of red brick masonry. The red brick, as well as the recycled sculpture in the glass lobby, are in deference to the school it has replaced. Other sustainable features include proper solar orientation for perimeter daylighting, clearstories for internal borrowed daylighting, flat plate heat exchangers, a thermal displacement ventilation mechanical system for variable indoor air quality and energy efficiency, green roofs, rain gardens, photovoltaic electricity harvesting capacity on the roof, user interface for mechanical data, recycled materials where possible with project phasing. The planning of the school left the baseball, softball, football fields and tennis courts, as well as the gym and lockers in place. Vehicular and pedestrian circulation was reconfigured to provide safer and easier access. The center point of the school is the new commons that looks south across “wolverine plaza” onto the football field and looks north across the “community plaza” to views of the city skyline. The commons is the transition space from the event functions to the east, such as the performing arts center, the three Gymnasiums and the more private academic, administrative and career technology education functions to west. The school's learning model maintains its current departmental approach, but by centrally locating the science department it can easily adapt to a personalized learning center, academy or integrated learning approach to educational delivery.

Grant County Skills Center, Moses Lake, Washington; The new Grant County Skills Center, located in Moses Lake, will annually benefit approximately 300 high school students from 11 regional school districts by preparing them with skills and certifications for highly desirable family-wage jobs in the local economy. The 43,000-square-foot Phase 1 facility on 8.25 acres will house state-of-the-art laboratories, classrooms, technology, and extensive equipment in support of programs in Culinary Arts, Pre-Engineering, Design and Construction, Manufacturing and Welding Technology, Pre-Nursing, and Dental Assisting. NAC|Architecture assisted in evaluation of potential sites, development of the comprehensive project budget, determination of required facilities to support the various skills departments, and assessment of how this somewhat non-traditional educational facility may implement high-performance strategies in pursuit of Washington Sustainable Schools Protocol (WSSP) achievement. The Phase 1 design sensitively considers how the future approximately 20,000-square-foot Phase 2 will be added, including provision for expanded indoor shop and outdoor work areas to support the planned Automotive Technologies addition and other as yet undefined skills spaces.

Riverview Elementary School, Snohomish School District, Snohomish, Washington: The design concept focuses on creating a “school in a park,” using the existing wetland on the property as an amenity to connect the school to its natural environment. Offsetting the classroom wings allows transparency to the open courtyards to penetrate deep into the heart of the school. Inside, groups of classrooms are clustered around shared learning areas, with transparency between the spaces in each group and to the outdoors. The tall central hallway acts as both a physical and a social connector, creating a permeable public space linking shared components of the school: the main entry, IDEA lab, library, gymnasium, commons and music room. The school will be a model of environmental stewardship and one of the most advanced sustainable designs for school facilities in the state. Learning opportunities abound, through exposed structural, mechanical and electrical systems; a wetland-buffer nature trail; geological timeline walkway; and an interactive touch screen displaying real-time energy-use data for the building. The school uses ground-loop heat exchange for heating and cooling, linked to closed-loop piping that circulates through 84 345-foot-deep geothermal bores under the school’s parking lots and rain gardens. The system uses no fossil fuels on site. Classrooms will be served by thermal displacement ventilation for high indoor air quality and efficiency. Building efficiency is further improved due to a super-insulated envelope (R-42 walls, R-22 roof and triple-pane windows). Riverview will have 100kW of photovoltaic solar-panel power generation, which will provide 18% of the total energy use. The combination of these features makes the school’s estimated energy use 73% below the energy use of a minimum code-compliant building.

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