CULLOWHEE, N.C.—International builder Skanska, based in Sweden, has finished up work on a new science education building at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee.

The 183,000-square-foot Tom Apodaca Science Building will offer educational training opportunities across Western Carolina’s technology, math, engineering and various other STEM disciplines. The Apodaca building replaces the former Natural Sciences Building, which existed on the same site for years.

The five-level Apodaca building will be home to Western Carolina’s departments of biology, chemistry and physics, as well as the school’s interdisciplinary program in forensic science. The facility also hosts a global information system laboratory, forensic anthropology lab, computational lab as well as various support offices and labs. The building also entails a rooftop greenhouse and terrace, allowing for additional training and experimental space effectively as a sixth floor. Apodada also hosts a steam micro-plant that replaced an older steam plant the university had been using.

The building was named for onetime North Carolina state senator Thomas M. Apodaca, known for his service to the western part of the Tarheel State as well as his support for Western Carolina University. Sen. Apodaca’s advocacy entailed pushing for the Connect NC bond referendum, which allocated funds for Western Carolina as well as other educational projects in the region. He graduated from Western Carolina in 1980 and currently serves on the school’s board of trustees.

The existing laboratories at the old Natural Sciences Building remained open throughout construction before being relocated to the Apodaca facility. The former Natural Sciences Building was then demolished and the space redesigned as an outdoor courtyard.

Skanska worked in conjunction with architect Lord Aeck Sargent of Chapel Hill and AEI Engineering, also of Chapel Hill, and who served as the project engineer.

“It was a privilege to work with Western Carolina University on this new STEM building offering superior learning opportunities for the students and staff at the university,” Greg Peele, executive vice president responsible for Skanska’s North Carolina and Virginia building operations, said in a recent statement. “The building’s technological advancements and innovative features will help prepare students for future careers in health care, high-tech manufacturing, natural product development and more.”

Added David Kinner, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Western Carolina:

“This Apodaca Science Building serves many of our WCU students, as those from across campus will come here to study diverse topics—from the magnificence of our universe to the complexity of a human body. Hopefully, students also begin to understand the scientific process, the steady and continued work of asking and answering questions, and comprehend the ability of science to provide important information and breakthroughs for society.”

Skanska’s U.S. operations are based out of New York. The firm generated $6.4 billion in revenue in 2021 alone.

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ATLANTA—Stevens & Wilkinson recently completed the redesign and historic rehabilitation of the empty David T. Howard School into a modern middle school in the heart of Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood.

The $52 million project, which began in early 2017, features the renovation of an existing 100,000-square-foot historic classroom building and 108,000-square-feet of new construction, including an administrative wing based on an originally designed element that was never built, a four-level classroom addition, media center, auditorium, music wing, and kitchen and cafeteria.

Stevens & Wilkinson served as lead architecture and engineering firm in collaboration with Lord Aeck Sargent who provided historic rehabilitation, landscape design expertise and building skin design.

“The most unique part of this project is the rejuvenation of a building that is nearly 100 years old,” says Bill Polk, principal and vice president of Stevens & Wilkinson. “The challenge was to fit a modern school program into one of the city’s most historic intown neighborhoods, while designing an addition that respects the historic qualities and doubles the square footage.”

The design team’s approach focused on the existing plan diagram to ensure the building’s historic features, including brick details, interior plaster and terrazzo materials, were maintained. The new addition connects to the existing building with elements that keep the existing building’s brick visible and joins all the building’s components.

“Great care was taken to design sensitively around the existing structure to highlight the attributes, while at the same time creating a new identity for the contemporary facility,” says Polk. “The site design activates the urban setting and reconnects several pedestrian paths and bike trails that have come to define this area of the city.”

The school is a four-story concrete frame building with brick cladding. The floor plan is a simple “U” shape with corridors connecting the classroom wings. There are four stair towers, one at each corner of the building, expressed on the exterior by taller walls and decorative brick and stone details. The main entrances along the bottom of the “U” are also identified by decorative brick and stone details.

The existing classroom building reflects the original layout as much as possible, and the new classroom wing consists of core, science, and music classrooms; the kitchen and cafeteria; and an auditorium.

The project also features a significant renovation to the existing gymnasium, built 20 years after the original building. The gym’s original steel windows were refurbished; the gym and stage floors were replaced with a wooden sports floor; the original brushed aluminum high bay light fixtures were refitted with high output LEDs; the original wood benches on steel brackets were lightly sanded and sealed; and the locker rooms were redesigned to provide modern facilities and a weight room.

The school, which sits on 7.5 acres of land donated by David T. Howard, a former slave who became one of Atlanta’s first Black millionaires, was first opened as the David T. Howard Grammar School in 1924 by the City of Atlanta on the block bound by what is now John Wesley Dobbs Ave., Randolph, Irwin and Howell streets in the city’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. The original design was built in two phases – 1924 and 1928 – with some portions of the original design left unbuilt.

Before the original school closed in 1976, it was attended by a number of prominent African American leaders and figures, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Atlanta’s first Africa-American mayor, Maynard Jackson; Olympic gold medalist Mildred McDaniel Singleton; and NBA star Walt Frazier.

“Even after the building was shuttered as a school, Atlanta Public Schools understood the historical and cultural significance of the building to the city and neighborhood,” said Jere J. Smith III, AIA, director of capital improvements for Atlanta Public Schools (APS). “The school board reaffirmed over and over the value of this school and continually made the decision to keep the building, even as the option to tear down and build new was considered.”

After 1976, portions of the building and the site were used as ad hoc administrative space, APS facilities office space, school archives, ROTC and Head Start programs. Additionally, APS considered several alternate uses for the facility over the years, including the APS central office and affordable housing for teachers.

Founded in 1919, Stevens & Wilkinson is a full-service architecture, engineering and interior design firm committed to providing clients with “Smart Design Solutions.”

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ATLANTA – SG Contracting Inc. cut the ribbon on Atlanta International School’s (AIS) new Primary School Learning Center on Aug. 30, 2018, establishing a space designed to enable the school’s mission to continue expansion.

Atlanta-based construction firm SG Contracting partnered with AIS in 2007 to work on multiple projects for the school.

Construction on the new learning center began on July 28, 2017 and was completed on July 27, 2018 with architectural firm Lord Aeck Sargent of Atlanta working on the project.

Atlanta International School is a Pre-K through 12 school known for its rigorous academic program, International Baccalaureate accreditation and a strong focus on preparing students for the future.

The overall goal of this project was to create a space that fosters collaborative learning options for students, starting at an early age.

The school seeks to facilitate the student’s learning endeavors by offering additional spaced that maintain connection and flexibility – essentially creating a foundation for creative and collaborative learning experiences.

Key design elements of the center include outdoor classrooms that open up opportunity for unique teaching methods, further expanding the creative minds of the students. The school also boasts shared work space areas in the corridors that can be used for multiple activities simultaneously.

“Flexible spaces are a huge trend in primary education today,” said Sachin Shailendra, president at SG Contracting Inc. “This new school was built around the idea that we should provide these adaptable spaces for students to learn. The student-centered design of this school promotes experiential learning at the highest degree. The outdoor classrooms, shared work areas, and the new courtyard provide many options for collaborative learning that we are seeing become the standard in education today.”

The school also provides several innovative technological features to guide students learning in the 21^st century.

These features include 75” 4k smartboards located in every classroom, allowing students to learn using the latest technology as well as using more traditional methods, like a white board.

There are charging carts for iPads used in every classroom and a key card security system and multidirectional cameras securing the school as well as every classroom.

Lastly, the new center presents a brand-new courtyard and outdoor classroom sport permeable pavers, allowing all rain water to simply drain through the ground and avoid large retention areas, allowing this space to be used for more purposes, including outdoor seating.

Staff feedback was heavily incorporated during the design and construction of this project with the staff involved in planning everything from the overall room layout, to where TVs and markerboards would be installed in the final space to the paint colors of the hallways.

“Every detail was a collaboration, down to the locks and coat hooks on the lockers, said Shailendra. “This joint process ensures that every aspect is intentional, and the building will fit multiple needs so it can be useful for decades to come.”

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The rising cost of higher education and the proliferation of online learning opportunities has given rise to speculation about the fate of traditional brick-and-mortar universities. However, the role of the residential university is as relevant today as it was when the great universities of Europe were being founded a millennium ago. They are communities of learning, or, in Thomas Jefferson’s phrasing, “academical villages,” where students and faculty can participate in the process of discovery and collaboration.

In addition, institutions are moving toward group work and problem-based learning, and the ubiquity of information technology has changed the very nature of work itself. As lines between work and play increasingly blur in society, so do the physical boundaries that have traditionally separated these spaces. This expresses itself in multifunctional, collaborative spaces that accommodate directed study, social study and informal social interaction.

Well-designed spaces encourage face-to-face interaction and discourse, which become increasingly valuable in today’s digital age, when many students rely on technology to mediate communication. Interpersonal collaboration and community building help to facilitate and inspire a culture of learning, transform the lived experience of a campus and, in turn, increase student attraction and retention.

Creating a “Third Place”

An important concept in community building is the idea of the “third place,” the space where people gather that is neither home nor work. On a campus, collaborative, multi-use spaces create a “third place” atmosphere where students and faculty can interact with one another and build relationships in an environment that exists outside of their usual contexts. Different from academic spaces such as classrooms and offices, or residential spaces such as dorms and apartments, “third places” such as food services, green spaces and common areas are often those most deeply associated with the university experience.

For example, national architecture firm Lord Aeck Sargent recently worked with Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta to design the Billye Suber Aaron Pavilion, which debuted in May 2017. Situated between two of the school’s primary academic buildings, this “third place” facility includes meeting rooms, informal gathering spaces and an open-air rooftop designed to provide connective and collaborative reprieve for medical students, staff and faculty.

From a design standpoint, a collaborative “third space” that is open and inviting, with plentiful natural light and visual transparency, encourages use. With its glass façade, the Billye Suber Aaron Pavilion is the most visible building on the Morehouse campus, allowing students to see one another enjoying the space, thus motivating spontaneous, unplanned use.

Designing Inherent Responsiveness

There is an inherent tension in designing a space that is articulated clearly enough to encourage certain kinds of behavior, yet is flexible enough to accommodate myriad uses that may not have been considered at the time of design. To achieve this, it’s helpful to think in registers of scale and permanence.

The form of the building and the outdoor spaces it creates are the least susceptible to change, so the relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces is critical. The structure of the building is also unlikely to change, so it should be designed to easily accommodate complete rehabilitation or renewal of the space over time.

Building systems are next. Power and data should be distributed broadly, with both wall and floor outlets to allow multiple occupations of the space. The placement of interior walls is critical for visual and acoustical separations, as well as for the scale of the spaces — from large gatherings to intimate conversations — to ensure the space can accommodate the entire spectrum of need. Moveable partitions like white boards or other visual barriers, and flexible, moveable, durable furniture enable students to reconfigure a fixed space to meet changing needs.

At Duke University in Durham, N.C., the nearly abandoned Gross Hall was transformed into a collaborative “center of centers,” connecting the schools of business, law, public policy and engineering. Highly collaborative, formal and informal social spaces throughout Gross Hall include a makerspace for student exploration and the Energy Hub, which revitalized the first floor into a vibrant and engaging social space to foster informal collaboration between students interested in energy and the environment. The Energy Hub has a mix of furniture for different types of interaction, including comfortable, lounge chairs for individuals to relax as well as tables and chairs for group work.

Proximity and movement are also key considerations to the design. Spaces designed for specific use can be treated as destinations that draw students along planned paths. More informal spaces, intended to accommodate spontaneous and serendipitous interaction, are located along these paths or at critical nodes or junctures where chance meetings are likely to occur. In this way, a student attending a specific event in a highly programmed space is also encouraged to interact in unintended ways with other students moving along the same path.

To read the entire article, check out the November/December issue of School Construction News.

Jackson Kane, principal, and Becky McDuffie, senior associate, work for Lord Aeck Sargent, a national architecture, planning and interior design firm.

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ATLANTA — Construction broke ground on a new Primary School Learning Center at the Atlanta International School’s campus in Atlanta’s Buckhead district.

Comprised of several buildings, the AIS campus will not only include the new three-story learning center, but it will also gain a new 9,000-square-foot courtyard that will be used for outdoor classrooms. A new cafeteria will also replace the existing library on the second floor. SG Contracting is handling construction for the project, while Lord Aeck Sargent is serving as the architect — both of which are locally based.

School Construction News spoke with Sachin Shailendra, president of SG Contracting, to get an insider look at the project, which is scheduled for completion in 2018, and to see how this school continues to build upon its international model.

Q: What is the main goal of the project?

Shailendra: The purpose of this project is to allow one of the most recognized and highly rated International schools in the country to continue growing so students can have an even better academic and extracurricular spaces. In addition to growing the campus as a whole, this project will also give students in K-5 a larger and more collaborative space.

Q: What are the key design elements involved?

Shailendra: The project consists of a new cooling system, constructing a new three-story primary school building with an outdoor courtyard and demolishing the existing library space to make room for a new kitchen.

The key design elements of this project are the indoor learning spaces that transition seamlessly into outdoor classrooms, as well as multiple flex areas that can be used for a multitude activities at the same time.

Q: How does the new design incorporate 21st century learning trends?

Shailendra: In a society that promotes more and more “screen” time, outdoor classrooms are becoming more and more mandatory. Children often spend hours inside at school staring at a screen only to go home and repeat the process. Outdoor classrooms offer the ability to revert some of the strenuous eye exercise and supplement some strenuous physical exercises. The project also utilizes flex rooms, which are designed to give more control to teachers. If the math class needs a smart board and structured desks, it is available. If, 15 minutes later, the math class requires a large open, collaborative space for a group project, it is available. Equipped with rolling marker boards, mobile storage drawers, and makerspaces, this building will be ready for any lesson.

Q: How does offering both indoor and outdoor spaces enhance learning opportunities for students?

Shailendra: The indoor and outdoor spaces allow teachers and staff to transition any inside class into an outdoor adventure. This keeps students alert, attentive and engaged for longer periods of time, leading students to retain more information in every class, as well as provides a welcoming change of scenery. The transitioning of spaces also allows teachers and staff to pull from their surroundings more, showing students that the lessons they are being taught can and are being used in the everyday outside world.

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