AUSTIN, Texas—The recently completed $28 million Menchaca Elementary School for the Austin Independent School District is a design-build project that has replaced an existing campus in a growing area of south Austin.

The 98,600-square-foot campus was originally conceived as a single building with interior circulation, but the design evolved through an extensive process that engaged teachers, parents and students. LPA Inc. was the architect on this impressive project. Joeris General Contractors was the general contractor.

The design features a collection of three buildings with shaded outdoor collaboration spaces designed around the existing heritage oak trees. The buildings form two courtyards linked by a second-story bridge that houses an innovative library media center and makerspaces specifically designed for the school. More than 30 percent of the site is open, vegetated space, creating direct links between the outdoors and learning environments.

With a build-out capacity of 870 students—this will account for the growth of this diverse city and the evolution of the District’s Strategic Plan. The entire process went from programming to permitting in six months.

Sustainability and energy efficiency were incorporated into every aspect of the design. Indoor water usage was cut by 30 percent and the overall energy use was reduced by 20 percent, primarily through passive measures such as building orientation, shading and strategic use of natural light. The campus is designed to meet LEED Silver certification, including a commitment to air quality and overall wellness for the students and faculty.

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RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Riverside Community College District (RCCD) officially joined the Riverside community last summer when it opened a performing arts building and culinary arts school in downtown in time for the 2016-17 school year. Its new Coil School for the Arts (CSA) and Culinary Arts Academy and District Offices (CAADO) blend in with the city’s historic Centennial Plaza, which is also home to the Center for Social Justice and Civil Liberties that was rehabilitated in 2012.

The location of the two facilities provides more opportunities for RCCD students to engage with the community in a more hands-on approach that better trains them for the professional world. Irvine, Calif.-based LPA Inc. served as the architect on the project, while locally based Tilden-Coil Constructors Inc. served as the general contractor.

“The main goal was to design an educational and cultural hub at the heart of downtown Riverside,” said Franco Brown, associate/design director for LPA Inc. “By moving key programs such as the School of Music and the Culinary Arts Academy ‘off-campus,’ the district brought the arts to the local community while benefiting from the exposure and synergies created.”

“The development of a comprehensive block in downtown with programs that have patrons and members of the public allowed the college district to move these programs into the community spotlight,” added Chris Carlson, chief of staff and facilities development at RCCD. “Each facility is designed to advance the programs; the former locations were inadequate for the current and future program development to help students preparing for the workforce in these areas.”

Culinary Arts Academy & District Offices

At 60,000 square feet, CAADO was the larger portion of the project. It features a demonstration kitchen and a restaurant open to the public with a vegetated rooftop deck for special events and performances that give students practical experience while also allowing the community to host celebrations.

“The previously secluded Culinary Arts Academy has now taken a center-stage location in downtown Riverside,” Brown said. “The program offers students an education in the different specialties of the culinary arts (including ice carving) with the vital experience of a real-world restaurant. The new facility gives students the traditional hands-on approach complemented with distance learning and access to online archival material produced in the demonstration kitchen.”

Unlike most traditional culinary art facilities, the CAADO building takes advantage of its prominent location, with all of the kitchens and a bakery situated on the building perimeter, facing the street, according to Brown. In contrast, the demonstration kitchen was located in the center of the layout to control light and the digital technology for recording and broadcasting sessions. In fact, this space was designed to be more like a television set than a traditional classroom. Last but not least, the project is centered around a 120-seat restaurant located on the corner that is open to the public. A glass tower element serves as a beacon at nighttime and connects the restaurant to the rooftop deck.

“Using glass ‘portals,’ we let the activities inside be ‘displayed’ to pedestrians and people driving by,” Brown said.

Having these activities on display attracts community engagement, and specifically the demonstration kitchen and rooftop terrace allow the district to advance and change the curriculum in ways they were unable to before, according to Carlson. He added that another key part of the CAADO building is that it brings all the district’s offices into one location instead of keeping them in the four separate locations that previously housed them.

Coil School of the Arts

As the new home for the Riverside City College music program, the CSA building also takes the spotlight (pun intended) in the community with its 450-seat concert hall and performance stage, primarily driven by acoustics to achieve uncompromising sound quality, according to Brown. The building also includes classrooms, practice rooms, a choral room, band room, orchestra room, a piano lab and a high-technology recording studio.

“The concert hall itself was conceived as a music instrument, applying the same principle of the resonance chamber found in many string instruments to achieve a three-second reverberation time for choir performances,” Brown said. “Sound absorptive panels, mechanized perimeter drapery and a moveable stage cloud can all be configured to cater to the large variety of music genres offered by the school program.”

A combination of new and proven technology was used throughout the building, Brown added. The 33 practice rooms were physically isolated from the adjacent concert hall using hanging stud walls and a floating concrete slab to avoid any sound interference. For the concert hall, a latticework of LED lights creates what Brown called a “visual boundary” for the space while allowing the sound through. Even a digital menu of multiple light patterns was programmed in to give users the ability to select the right atmosphere for each performance.

Due to a code height limitation, the service space at catwalk level had to integrate the structural, mechanical, electrical, rigging, fire-suppressing and lighting systems in a constrained space, according to Brown. During the design development, LPA’s integrated design team used BIM software technology to achieve this complex system coordination, something that a decade ago would have been nearly impossible.

“Having a music performance hall, recording studio and triple the number of practice rooms is a game changer, and so is having a home for all performances versus moving from venue to venue,” said Carlson. “This has been a huge success for them, with community and professional engagement. The Riverside Philharmonic even moved its performance venue from the Fox Performing Arts Center to the Coil School for the Arts, providing more opportunities for students.”

To read the entire article, check out the September/October issue of School Construction News.

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MENLO PARK, Calif. — Construction on TIDE (Technology, Innovation, Design and Engineering) Academy, formerly Menlo Park Small High School, is scheduled to break ground in May. Designed by LPA Inc., with local offices in San Jose, Calif., the project has a strong initiative to deliver innovative and engaging student environments.

Spanning nearly 44,000 square feet, TIDE Academy is designed to implement a project-based learning curriculum with an emphasis on college and career readiness in STEM fields. “With a focus on engineering and design education, TIDE Academy uses technology as the connector and the common language,” said Kate Mraw, design director at LPA Inc. “At the core of the school planning is the learning cluster: a ‘Junior Institute’ for grades 9 and 10, and a ‘Senior Institute’ for grades 11 and 12. This lead to unique and innovative educational adjacencies supporting a variety of space types — learning studios, huddle rooms, student and faculty collaborative spaces, and a dispersed administration concept.”

The public school uses its location at the south end of the San Francisco Bay to its advantage, providing opportunities to use community amenities near the site that will augment health, fitness and wellness programs. An outward-focused campus invites community, business and institutional partnerships to drive technology-based education, allowing the school to become a member of the community and extend to a variety of places outside the campus.

“With high-tech neighbors, TIDE Academy is in the center of the hub,” said Katia McClain, managing director at LPA Inc. “Therefore, engaging the community and sharing the educational opportunities within became a driving design strategy for the campus, both organizationally and architecturally. The design celebrates the innovation of the community while creating moments throughout campus for mentoring and access to the industries greatest talent.”

The building is organized to maximize exposure to daylight as well as views of the San Francisco Bay with a fluid indoor-outdoor connection throughout the space. It is stacked on three floors allowing abundant space for outdoor learning, while the L-shaped configuration allows direct access to an adjacent outdoor learning area from every interior space. This intentional design allows for flexible learning spaces and takes advantage of the coastal climate.

“The ‘hands-on’ learning strategies of the Menlo Park Small High School extend to incorporate innovative and responsive sustainable design strategies to make the building itself an interactive learning experience,” said Helen Pierce, design director at LPA Inc. “The U-shaped building wraps and protects a central courtyard from excessive sun and wind while allowing north light to flood interior spaces.”

While the building features classroom spaces, it also includes a makerspace, a coding lab dedicated to computer code education and software development, and a design lab for rapid prototyping and implementing design concepts. The design minimizes the building’s environmental footprint by conserving natural resources, reducing energy and water consumption, and generating less pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

“The new high school is in an area that will be impacted by future sea-level rise,” Pierce added. “The planning of the school includes resiliency strategies such as elevating the first floor by 3 feet, locating primary electrical and the building Main Distribution Frame above the first-floor level and providing on-site renewable energy.”

A large, perforated metal scrim will shade the building by protecting it from direct glare and reducing solar heat gains. Stormwater will also be collected and used for the native plant and bio-retention planters on site. Increasing permeable surfaces on the campus, according to a statement, will also significantly reduce the runoff volume.

Even though the project is just in the beginning stages of construction, its design already received the Leroy F. Green award at the Coalition for Adequate School Housing (CASH) 38^th Annual Conference earlier this year.

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