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New High School No. 2
2013 Award of Merit, Project-in-Design, Coalition for Adequate School Housing/AIACC Leroy F. Greene Design + Planning Awards
Long Beach Unified School District, Long Beach, California: Long Beach Unified School District’s new 800-student high school is focused on preparing students for a career in the hospitality industry. The design reflects a plaza scheme, a courtyard surrounded by 2-story buildings that house classrooms, Library/Media Center, administration, and sports facilities. The plaza provides the school with a “living room” for the students and a venue for events related to the hospitality industry, which will partner with the school. Landscape and hardscape are designed to provide a variety of areas for student dining, teaching and gathering, with access by a grand stair from the street. The stair does double duty, providing a place for students to gather with amphitheater style seating. The school is designed to accommodate public use and after-hours access; entry to the multipurpose room is at street level and does not require accessing the rest of the campus. The gym is adjacent to the courtyard at the lower level, allowing activities in the gym to spill into the courtyard.
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.
PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center
, Ketchikan, Alaska: The existing hospital is the sum of five separate building campaigns, undertaken over many years, resulting in a less than optimal arrangement of services constrained by aging infrastructure. The pragmatic task of the project was to provide new surgical facilities and significantly increase clinical office space to better serve the community and relieve pressure on the emergency department. The architectural task is to reconnect the hospital to its site and the patient’s and staff’s experience to their wider natural environment. The solution involves both a major new addition to the hospital and a reorganization of the internal departmental relationships. The existing hospital is largely indifferent to its natural setting. A small creek was buried to facilitate vehicle circulation and the building oriented to offer only occasional limited glimpses to the water or to the mountains. Any opportunity for a positive connection to the natural setting was unfulfilled, an unfortunate situation that the new design seeks to remedy. The “new” hospital will feature a creek at the main entry, and focused views to nature from the main public areas. The public waiting rooms, the healing garden, and the main waiting/admissions area physically connect the hospital to the scale and grandeur of the Tongass Narrows and the mountains of Gravina Island beyond, while the designed landscape provides sensory immediacy to the surrounding natural environment.
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.
Ferris High School
, Spokane Public Schools, Spokane, Washington: This comprehensive modernization and replacement project will substantially transform Joel E. Ferris High School to better meet the educational needs of the expanding student population, provide a more efficient layout, and feature a cohesive architectural design style. The 265,000-square-foot facility will replace all classrooms, offices and public spaces with a single multi-story building with internal circulation. The school’s original performing arts center and new, award-winning Gymnasium, Health and Fitness Complex – designed by NAC|Architecture – will be retained and the rest of the buildings will be demolished. In addition, the performing arts center will be renovated, and play fields, parking, bus loading, and driveways will be rebuilt. Construction is expected to finish by fall 2014. Buildings will be demolished in phases and the school will be in operation throughout construction.
Eisenhower High School
, Yakima Public Schools, Yakima, Washington: The rugged beauty of the Yakima Valley inspired the design of this 290,000-square-foot replacement school, whose exterior is clad primarily in earthtone masonry with subtle shade variations that reinforce the surrounding rocky hillsides. Designed to have a strong presence and visibility to the community, the L-shaped building features a prominently positioned glass-enclosed main public entry and second-story library. As the heart of the school, the commons is located directly adjacent to the auditorium foyer and gym entry spaces. Administration and security offices – directly adjacent to the commons – are positioned to monitor the main public entry. The kitchen, student store and Renaissance Store surround the commons. Major corridors emanate from the commons, making it the true activity hub of the school. Academic spaces surround the exterior courtyard on three sides, allowing natural light within virtually every classroom. Athletic support spaces are adjacent to the gym – which includes four practice courts and two competitive courts – with easy access to the stadium and fields. Fitness and weight rooms overlook the athletic fields from the second floor above the locker rooms. Drama support spaces are directly adjacent to the stage of the auditorium followed by band and choir spaces. The theater seats 800 people, three to four times the number accommodated by the existing facility. Corridors are configured to create loop circulation, giving students alternate paths to their destinations and therefore reducing congestion.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Construction is scheduled to begin in March 2012.
Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center
, Moses Lake, Washington
2012 Citation Award, AIA Spokane
The new Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center, located in Moses Lake, will benefit approximately 300 high school students each term from 10 regional school districts by preparing them with skills and certifications for highly desirable family-wage jobs in the regional economy. The 43,570-square-foot Phase 1 facility on 8.1 acres will house state-of-the-art laboratories, classrooms, technology, and extensive high-tech equipment in support of programs in Advanced Manufacturing, Computer Science AP, Culinary Arts, Life Sciences/Global Health, Multi Craft Trades/Pre Apprenticeship, Pre-Engineering, and Professional Medical Careers. NAC|Architecture assisted in evaluation of potential sites, master planning future expansion and phasing, development of the comprehensive project budget and facilitating project prioritization and funding via Washington State’s specific skills center process, determination and design of required facilities to support the various skills departments, and implementation of high-performance Washington Sustainable Schools Protocol (WSSP) strategies into this somewhat non-traditional, future-leaning educational facility. The Phase 1 design sensitively considers how the approximately 20,000-square-foot Phase 2 will be added in the future, including provision for expanded classroom, indoor shop and outdoor work areas to support the planned Automotive Technology, Law Enforcement, Pre-Veterinary Technology, and Video Technology programs. (Grant County Skills Center)
More Projects
Renton Secondary Learning Center
, Renton School District, Renton, Washington
Cherry Crest Elementary School
, Bellevue School District, Bellevue, Washington
Auburn High School Modernization & Reconstruction
, Auburn School District, Auburn, Washington
Carl Sandburg Elementary School
, Lake Washington School District, Kirkland, Washington
Community Hospital of Anaconda
, Anaconda, Montana
Mat-Su Day School
, Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, Palmer, Alaska
Cheney Elementary School
, Cheney Public Schools, Cheney, Washington
Medical Office Building
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Sustainability
Higher Education Projects
: sun control envelope, optimizing energy performance
Student Housing
: Eco-living, energy savings
K-12 School Projects
: displacement ventilation, daylighting
Healthcare Projects
: green roof, natural environment, sustainable wood products
Dental and Orthodontic Design
: client preference, budget
Residential | Continuing Care Communities
: energy savings, minimizing site disturbance
Commercial Projects
: daylight harvesting
Civic | Public
: adaptive reuse
Recreation | Community Projects
: natural daylighting, waste reduction, thermal envelope
Restoration | Preservation Projects
: daylighting, high-content recycled and locally procured material, building and material reuse
On-the-Boards
: energy conservation, natural setting, daylighting
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