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The 36,632-square-foot renovation and 59,865-square-foot expansion at the school was built by Neenah, Wis.-based Miron Construction Co. according to the LEED for Schools program, which takes into account classroom acoustics, master planning, mold prevention, community space sharing and indoor quality, among other factors that "directly affect the health and well-being of children," according to the United States Green Building Council.

The school earned the certification for energy use, lighting, water and material use, along with incorporating the sustainable strategies into the classroom curriculum.

"The Lake Mills Middle School project efficiently uses our natural resources and makes an immediate, positive impact on our planet, which will tremendously benefit future generations to come," he said council founder and president Rick Fedrizzi.

Dean Sanders, Lake Mills’ district administrator, said the students have taken a great deal of pride in understanding how sustainability was integrated into the building.

"Teachers talk about how much quieter the building is, making it much easier to communicate with students," he said. "Many have commented on the significantly reduced respiratory illnesses and no longer need to take asthma or allergy medication."

The school’s total annual energy savings of $85,000 was a result of a high-efficiency building envelope, energy efficient lighting and controls system, and a geothermal heating and cooling system, according to company officials.

The school also added windows to increase day lighting and exterior sun shelves to reduce heat gain and glare.

Through the energy saving efforts, the school was able to return about $700,000 to taxpayers, according to the officials from the construction company.

The ventilation system is filtered by MERV filtration, which is designed to contribute to high indoor air quality and enhance the health and well-being of the staff and students, according to Theresa Lehman, director of sustainable services for Miron Construction, who served as the LEED project administrator.

The building was constructed with low emitting materials to further enhance air quality, and acoustically modeled for communication between the staff, students and the natural environment.

Company officials said 63 percent of the materials were regionally harvested and manufactured, and more than 68 percent of the wood bought for the facility was certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

The district was able to reuse and refurbish existing classroom furniture, which saved thousands of dollars that went toward an underground stormwater retention system and window wells in the lower-level classrooms that originally had no natural daylight, officials said.

Vegetation and bioswales were also added to create an outdoor classroom, providing hands-on teaching opportunities on biodiversity and ecology.

Planting native vegetation and "low-mow" grasses eliminated the need for irrigation systems and low-flow plumbing fixtures were installed, resulting in a 42 percent decrease in water usage compared to a code-compliant school, officials reported.

Miron superintendent Jay Kuhlman implemented a construction indoor air quality plan and a construction waste management plan that resulted in diverting 77 percent of waste from the landfill, reintroducing the construction materials into the manufacturing process.

"The project drivers included teacher interaction, unique learning spaces, improved accessibility, connection to the neighborhood, cost efficiency, replacement of outdated and inefficient systems with high efficient systems, and integrating sustainable features," said Greg Douglas, vice president of design-build services for Miron Construction.
    

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“It ultimately becomes the bookend at the north end of the campus, from a building that’s at the south end,” he said. “This building ends up being at the termination of what they call the centennial walkway that celebrates the school’s first 100 years.”

Building the Future

Hamilton said another point that came up in the design process was providing social spaces that were beyond the program’s classroom and laboratory space.

Neimer said one of the challenges of the project was the space constraint of the building.
 

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“You can basically see through it — you can’t hide in it,” said Janet Kelley, communications director for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the organization funding part of the new public-private twin buildings on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

The transparency is intended on both a structural and operational level. The facility was designed to encourage interaction and collaboration among different disciplines — the goal of the three groups that brought the project together.

The idea for the twin institutes was first proposed by former Gov. Jim Doyle about six years ago and “taken up with great enthusiasm” by alumni John and Tasha Morgridge, who donated the initial $50 million to kick it off, Kelley said.

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The new $175 million, 137,000-square-foot instructional and administrative complex, designed by Dallas-based Urban Design Group, opened this year and marks the completion of the first phase of a two-phased building program that will expand and modernize the 80-year-old film school with a new campus-within-a-campus design.

A Nod to the Past

The film school was founded in 1929, and its aging facilities could no longer accommodate the growing cinematography program, which now includes nine academic divisions and an increasing enrollment.

Prompted by cramped conditions and outdated buildings, university officials decided in 2004 to build a new film school that would provide students and faculty with a sense of place within the urban sprawl.

Architects were tasked with creating a five-building compound that would honor the school’s heritage, incorporate sustainable design strategies and last at least 100 years.

Taking its cue from existing campus structures dating back to the 1920s and ’30s, including the Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library and the George Finley Bovard Administration Building, the firm worked with university officials and donor LucasFilm Foundation to develop a modern version of the California style, says Ray Kahl, managing principal at Urban Design Group.

“Parts of those buildings were used to give the flavor and context that this complex of buildings was original to the campus,” Kahl says.

The style is characterized by low-pitched roofs, building symmetry, and windows and door arches. The new complex, the first of five planned structures, also features an arcade and the use of an exterior plaster that contains ground stone.

Two wings of the four-story structure are named after George Lucas, one of the school’s most famous alumni, and Steven Spielberg, a trustee of the university. They are joined by a single corridor to form an 80-by-60-foot courtyard adorned with balconies and arches.

A majority of the 123,000 square feet of interior space is dedicated to instructional spaces, including eight classrooms, three large-format mixing labs, 23 conference rooms, four screening rooms and three theaters. Students also have access to a 700-square-foot exhibition space and a 200-seat indoor/outdoor café.

Although the university is not pursuing LEED certification, the complex is designed to meet LEED Gold requirements.

In addition to eco-friendly building materials, the complex features radiant floor and ceiling panels, occupancy-based temperature sensors and an energy management system. Energy-efficient windows and 12-inch-thick concrete walls are designed to help reduce heating and cooling costs.

“The period styles have a tendency to be a bit more energy-efficient than the modern styles,” Kahl says. “If you go back and look at the performance of buildings that were built in these eras, they achieve some very high energy standards.”

The building’s courtyard design allows abundant natural light in parts of the wings and along the corridor, providing views of the campus and the courtyard.

100-Year Design

The design team took a two-pronged approach to meet the university’s mandate that the building have a 100-year life span, with a resilient building structure that withstands earthquakes and a flexible design to accommodate educational and technological changes.

An exterior shear frame and a system of fused rotating walls are designed to reroute fissures and prevent the facility from being destroyed.

“Most buildings are designed for one thing, and that’s the safety of the occupants,” Kahl says. “They are not designed for the survivability of the building itself.”

The fused walls serve as connectors that isolate and redirect shocks from an earthquake away from walls, ceilings and floors so that damage is done to non-foundational areas. The result is a basic structure that is elastic, with inelastic connectors.

The shear exterior frame pairs with a light steel interior to create a flexible interior.

“We made the structure very simple,” Kahl says. “We have few columns in the space, and we concentrated all the permanent elements, including the toilet rooms, vertical shafts and electronic feeds, into cores, which created a space where you could tear everything else down and reconfigure it any way you want.”

Classrooms are designed to be flexible, with movable furniture and equipment to allow seminar-style teaching, traditional teaching or screenings. Hallways are also designed to provide informal collaborative spaces and are wired for laptop computer connections.

Teaming rooms — unassigned spaces with audio-visual equipment — located on the top three floors allow students to hold conferences, preview work or meet with professors.

BIM Modeling

Architects were able to trim more than six weeks off the delivery time using building information modeling, which created a virtual model of the building to provide specifications for construction.

BIM allowed coordination among all master trades, including structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing and architecture, Kahl says.

“We managed to reduce the amount of errors that occur throughout the coordination in the field and speed up the job,” he says.

In phase two, the design team started the project with virtual modeling and used it for visualization, programming and the generation of construction documents. In addition to aiding with design and materials fabrication, the technology will help with facility maintenance after occupancy.

“In both cases, we are doing something unique,” Kahl says. “They are taking the model and using it for their facilities management and doing everything from preventive maintenance to energy monitoring.”

The 3-D model of phase one was integrated with the university’s software for real-time monitoring of the building’s HVAC, electrical and plumbing systems. BIM will allow monitoring of more than 5,000 sensors located throughout the building.

“Our facilities guys have been involved in the design from the beginning and they are doing what’s called smart tagging, where they want to see valves tagged or air-handling units tagged with the information of what that unit is,” says Mandeep Rabhari, project manager for USC. “Down the line, when technicians go out for a trouble call, they can look at the model and pinpoint where the unit is.”

Phase Two

Hathaway Dinwiddie, of San Francisco, oversaw construction of phase one and is now managing work on phase two, which includes a 36,000-square-foot instructional building, a 9,500-square-foot soundstage, a 9,200-square-foot soundstage and an 8,450-square-foot soundstage.

The instructional building will be used for animation and digital arts production and as both a production equipment center and the new headquarters for the school’s admissions/student services operations. Phase two is expected to be completed by August 2010.

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When the Episcopal Academy decided it was time to consolidate its lower, middle and upper schools into a single, unified campus, it set out to create a family of buildings related by materials and basic design details, yet distinguished by purpose and architectural style.

Until recently, the historic academy that was founded in 1785 was split into two Pennsylvania campuses in Merion Township and Devon. Merion campus, which opened in the 1920s, was running out of programming space and had met the township’s cap on impervious surface coverage.

“We just felt that we didn’t have the facilities we needed, including field space and classroom space,” says Hamilton Clark, head of school. “In order to be the school we wanted, we had to move.”

The academy found a 123-acre site in Newtown, a scenic dairy-farm community that provided a pastoral palette — replete with rolling hills, wooded areas and the occasional barn — upon which to build the new unified campus.

“The most important thing for us was creating a sense of community — a sense that we were a single school — and finding the right space for that community,” Clark says.
The new campus would not only have to provide the program space for the academy’s rigorous academic curricula, but also collegiate athletic facilities to train and prepare students for their transition into university life.

Setting the Stage

In 2002, the school hired Brailsford & Dunlavey, of Washington, D.C., as development manager for the project and presented the firm with a unique vision: A 380,000-square-foot, pre-K-12 campus that looked as if it had evolved over time by using multiple architects.

“They wanted the balance of a campus that did not look like it was built all at the same time,” says Julie Skolnicki, project manager with Brailsford. “However, they were concerned if they had multiple architects, it wouldn’t feel like a single campus, but rather an architectural museum.”

The school also expressed a strong commitment to hiring a local design firm that could deliver a large-scale, diverse campus within a $160 million budget.

After meeting with Philadelphia-based architect RMJM, Brailsford proposed a strategy to meet the design and budget requirements: Hire RMJM as master architect and select specialty architects to design the campus center and the athletic center. The approach would allow for individuality among the buildings, but a consistent palette of materials to help keep costs down.

“We felt it was important to have multiple design hands on campus,” Skolnicki says. “The campus would have a layer of styles that the master architect could tie together. The materials and details would be consistent, which would allow the cost of construction to be lower.”

Cast and Crew

In 2004, RMJM was hired as master architect and architect of record for the campus academic buildings, which included the lower school, middle school, science center and upper school.

“We were intrigued by the idea,” says Philip Dordai, managing principal with RMJM. “Most campuses in this country have evolved over time. Their charm and character are the result of a variety of architecture that is of its time and from different hands. Episcopal wanted that effect, but very quickly.”

The school was optimistic that having a master architect oversee the materials palette, structural and mechanical systems, and other functional details, would ensure a cohesive campus design and substantial savings during the bidding process.

“RMJM took over all designs at 50 percent design development,” Skolnicki says. “They did all the construction documents for all of the buildings, ensuring the same windows and exterior materials were specified and consistent detailing was used throughout so when the project was bid out, it was a much larger project than if each building was done with unique systems. It gave us bigger buying power.”

Brailsford suggested a similar approach for construction.

“We wanted to use the same thinking that we put together for the design team,” Skolnicki says. “If we had a single construction manager do the project, then we would have that buying power and efficiency.”

In August 2006, local firm Intech Construction was selected as construction manager for the bulk of the academic buildings on campus. The company also provided value engineering and value added services during the budgeting and estimating phase of the project to guarantee cost-effective systems.

“The ability to understand a lot of different expectations and design intentions and make sure everyone’s needs were met through the estimating and budgeting phase was one of the challenges that made it interesting,” says Phil Moses, project manager with Intech.

To create a diverse campus look, two other architectural firms were selected based on their experiences with specialized school buildings.

Gund Partnership, a Cambridge, Mass., firm with a background in performing arts, was selected to design the campus center, which included a black-box theater and other visual arts facilities, a library and dining hall. Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, of Philadelphia, had a strong athletics portfolio and was hired to design the athletic center.

Exposition

Before starting work on building concepts and designs, the architects came together to discuss a materials and architectural palette for the campus.

“What Episcopal wanted was a set of related buildings, from the same family,” Dordai says. “They didn’t want four or five designers who weren’t talking to each other. It was interesting give and take in determining the palette with the other designers.”

After sampling ideas with school and community representatives during a series of charettes, the design teams settled on a combination of materials that would recall the barns and large structures in the surrounding Pennsylvania landscape.

“We wanted to a use a rural and pastoral set of materials that would evoke those kinds of buildings, but we also wanted to do a modern building style,” Dordai says. “We knew the buildings had to be somewhat modest in their materials so we designed a custom concrete masonry block to recall the stone used in the area.”

The material selection consisted of custom CMU blocks and sustainable Hardie board, a fiber cement board painted to look like wood. Some of the academic buildings feature painted metal shed roofs that are similar to roofs on farm buildings in the area. None of the buildings are more than three stories tall, in keeping with the Pennsylvania farm aesthetic. Pieces of stone were eventually added onto the buildings at significant points for a stronger visual impact.

“The client may laugh at this, but, as architects, we were almost being too responsible to the budget,” Dordai says. “We took stone out of the budget, but a lot of people wanted to see stone on the buildings so we put it back in.”

Once each building was developed, it was assigned a user group consisting of faculty, parents, trustees and other key stakeholders who met regularly with the corresponding design team. When initial designs were completed, plans were submitted to the planning committee for final approval.

“It was a fairly complicated setup,” Skolnicki says. “We lead all of the meetings, which were twice a month during the design process and monthly toward the end. When the designs were presented to the planning committee, all of the architects were in one room, so everyone got to see the feedback.”

According to Dordai, one of the greatest challenges was letting each designer put their stamp on the buildings, while trying to manage costs and establish some common vocabulary among the structures.

“It was pretty positive,” he says. “It was like, ‘This is the sandbox; these are the toys you are going to play with; play nice.’ We were pretty much able to do that.”

Resolution

The new campus is home to several college-level facilities, including a full-scale auditorium and theater with professional audio-visual equipment, a modern library with digital media delivery to every classroom, and an extensive athletic program consisting of nine athletic fields, 14 tennis courts, a field house and 35-meter pool.

Yet, the campus does not assume a typical university footprint. Rather, in reference to the modern farm aesthetic, coupled with a strong sense of community, the campus is a tightly knit academic village oriented around a unifying campus green.

Each building has a presence on the green, creating a forum for each structure to demonstrate its identity and architectural heritage, as well as its adherence to the overall campus design.

“One of our issues at the previous campus was that the different schools were pretty separate,” Clark says. “Now, you’ll see middle school students going to meet with third-graders, or a group of upper school students helping lower school students with a math project. It’s close enough for that level of interaction to happen.”

The middle school, science center and upper school are in one building along the edge of the green, but have separate identities.

“The middle school is the first building you see as you come in,” Dordai says. “Its main study hall sits on the green, a critical position on campus.”

Vaulted ceilings and long tables in the study hall provide a place where the entire middle school can come together, or study in small groups.

The science building serves as the link between the upper school and the middle school. Its three-story central atrium gives it one of the most transparent and tallest profiles on campus, while a strong color palette sets the building apart from its more subdued neighbors.

“It was really important to the school that the science center look like a science center,” Skolnicki says. “We used high-tech shading devices in the windows and on the exterior pieces, while using materials and details consistent with the rest of the campus.”

The upper school evokes a more collegiate look, defining the transition from preparatory school to university life with a student honor hall.

“The honor hall has a fireplace and comfortable seating, which really speak to the fact these students have more freedom,” Skolnicki says.

Both the middle and upper school evoke the rural theme with pitched roofs, a common element of farmhouses in the area.

The campus center, designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, sits across from the academic building and anchors its side of the green with a clean, modern look. Portions of the roof are pitched, in deference to the pastoral theme.

The athletic center, designed by Gund, makes a strong connection to the original site with a white, barn-like structure.

“When you’re building a big-span space and what used to be on the site were barns, why not build a big barn and treat it as an athletic center?” Skolnicki says.

Encore

The academy’s chapel was developed as a special project by Robert Venturi, an architect at Philadelphia-based Venturi Scott Brown and an alumnus of the school.

The chapel’s steeple visually dominates the campus from the top of the campus green and from nearby Route 252.

“One of the interesting things from the beginning was where the chapel should go,” Clark says. “I think it became clear to all of us early on that the chapel needed to be what you saw as you drove onto the campus.

“We determined it needed to be in the most prominent spot at the top of the green. I live a few miles from campus and, from my driveway, I can see the steeple in the distance.”

Product Data

Facility Name: The Episcopal Academy
Type of Facility: pre-K-12
Project Cost: $160 million
Area: Site 380,000 square feet on a 123-acre site
Athletic Center: 107,000 square feet
Campus Center: 80,000 square feet
Academic Building: 96,400 square feet
Lower School: 60,000 square feet
Chapel: 16,800 square feet
Number of Classrooms: 110
Number of Students: 1,200
Construction Start Date: August 2006
Completion Date: August 2008

Project Team

RMJM Hillier (architecture): Athletic Center, Campus Center, Lower School and Academic Building
Bohlin Cywinski, Jackson (architecture): Athletic Center
The Gund Partnership (architecture): Campus Center
Venturi Scott Brown (architecture): Chapel
Architectural Alliance (architecture): Maintenance Building
Construction Manager, academic
building: Intech Construction, Academic Buildings
Construction Manager, Chapel: P Agnes Inc.
Owner: The Episcopal Academy
Owner’s Representative: Brailsford & Dunlavey
Project Manager: Brailsford & Dunlavey

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By Amy Perry

Athletic and recreational facilities play an important role in the development of students at all levels of education. Whether they are used for academic programs, extracurricular activities or competitive spaces, gymnasiums and playing fields offer an alternative to indoor curricula and a chance for students to build skills outside the classroom.

Athletic facilities can also help community members connect to their schools by hosting sporting events, concerts and family-friendly activities. Fans will drive through inclement weather and sit on a concrete bench for three hours in near-freezing temperatures just to watch their favorite college football team take the field. Parents gladly sacrifice an evening at home to watch their child participate in the school play.

Beyond the individual level, athletic facilities help establish a school’s identity within its community and among peer institutions.

School Construction News selected three projects from different regions of the United States that illustrate unique approaches to athletic facilities at the high school and university levels.

In Union City, N.J., an urban school district in cramped city quarters chose to build up instead of out to provide student athletes with athletic facilities. In the Midwest, officials at Missouri State University took advantage of available space to honor fans and athletes with an 11,000-seat arena replete with multiple seating options and fan-friendly amenities. Finally, at the University of Arizona, intercollegiate sports programs that previously vied for practice time in a handful of available spaces received a boost from a multimillion expansion of on-campus training facilities.

JQH Arena Evokes School Spirit

HIGHLIGHTS Missouri State University, Springfield, Mo. • $67 million arena • Two seating bowls with 11,000 seats and 26 suites • Grand entrance, Hall of Fame and club • Student section with dedicated concourse

Fans, athletes and students at Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo., are enjoying the view in a new $67 million arena that takes school pride to the next level with a dedicated student section and larger-than-life representation of the university mascot.

The JQH Arena, named for university alumnus and major donor John Q. Hammons, opened its doors in November 2008 as a multi-use facility designed to accommodate sporting events, concerts and family shows.

International architectural firm Ellerbe Becket designed the arena in conjunction with Pellham Philips of Springfield, and JE Dunn Construction of Kansas City managed construction. The fast-tracked project took approximately 30 months from the start of design to the time the doors opened.

The arena features more than 11,000 seats, a 4,500-square-foot club, a Hall of Fame, a team store and other fan-friendly amenities.

While the facility is designed to suit a variety of fans with several seating options, including 55 courtside seats, 26 suites and upper and lower seating bowls, the design team made student seating a priority with a dedicated student section.

During the planning process, architects held interviews with student representatives to get a sense of what they needed for program space and how they planned to use the facility, says Steve Duethman, principal with Ellerbe Becket and project manager.

“We sat down with the student body group government representatives and got an idea from them about what they like about games and what draws them to a facility or particular event,” Duethman says. “From that, we determined the students wanted an area of the arena they could call their own, which they didn’t have in the existing facility.”

As a result, the arena’s west end is designed specifically for students, with bleacher seating to allow for standing, a dedicated concourse and concession stands, and a large-scale mural of students attending an event at the school’s existing sports facility. The university mascot is represented by a bear sculpture that students can rub or pat as they move to their seats.

The student section is located next to the visiting team bench, a strategy designed to boost the home-court advantage.

“We always try to design the student end so that it is next to the visiting team bench, along with the pep band,” Duethman says. “During timeouts, when the band is playing, it’s hard for the visiting team to get their act together. It’s another aspect of creating a home-team advantage.”

The arena’s exterior features a massive vinyl composition in the shape of a bear head to provide a visual reminder of the university mascot. The mascot blends with the silver polycarbonate exterior sheen during the day but takes on a different character at night.

“At night, when the light is shining outward, you see this bear head silhouette on the polycarbonate,” Duethman says. “You know there is an event going on.”

The polycarbonate exterior also allows natural light into the concourses and seating areas and is UV- and crack-resistant. Precast concrete formwork with customized formliners hem the lower half of the building to break up the exterior with a texture designed to recall the neighboring Ozark Mountain range.

“We had formliners created for the precast concrete formwork that evoke the strata of the Karst formations in the Ozarks,” Duethman says. “We drew upon what makes the Ozarks special in terms of materials.”

New High School Facility Rises Above

HIGHLIGHTS Union City High School, Union City, N.J. • New $178 million high school • 110,000-square-foot rooftop playing field • Synthetic playing field, lights and bleacher seating for 2,000 • 21,000-square-foot gymnasium

Student-athletes in Union City, N.J., will soon be playing football, baseball and soccer against the backdrop of the New York City skyline thanks to a new $178 million high school that takes athletics to new heights with a rooftop playing field.

The 366,000-square-foot school, set to open this year, will replace two existing high schools and a 4-acre playing field as part of a citywide redevelopment program intended to revitalize the school district and surrounding area.

RSC Architects of Cliffside Parks, N.J., in association with the St. Louis office of HOK, designed the school, which is located at the site of the former Roosevelt Stadium. Epic Management of Piscataway, N.J., is the construction manager for the project, which started in fall 2006 and is expected to reach completion in time for the 2009-10 school year.

Union City’s dense population and scarcity of available land presented a unique set of circumstances for the school, which requires program space for 1,700 students and athletic facilities that could replace the former 4-acre field contained within the now-demolished Roosevelt facility.

“The idea of putting the athletic field on top of the roof came from the fact that we would have had to displace about 1,400 families if we had put the stadium somewhere else,” says John Capazzi, principal at RSC Architects.

“And the cost was astronomical compared to the additional cost of putting a stadium on the roof.”

To maximize space, architects chose a multilevel design that met needs for academic programs and indoor and outdoor sports within a contained footprint. The school’s educational spaces are housed in a four-story, L-shaped classroom wing that frames part of the two-story building core.

Academic features include 66 classrooms, space for home economics and art and dance, technology labs and a media center. In the building’s two-story core area, shared spaces include a cafeteria, an outdoor courtyard, a 21,000-square-foot gymnasium and a 900-seat performing arts auditorium and theater.

“The theater will provide the district with its first-ever, high school-level theater,” Capazzi says. “They’re excited about having a theatrical program and a full auditorium.”

Located 40 feet above grade, atop the auditorium and gymnasium, is a 110,000-square-foot, regulation-sized playing field for football, baseball, soccer and lacrosse. Student-athletes, coaches and fans will have access to a grandstand area, a concession stand and bleacher seating for 2,000 spectators.

To support the weight of the field without sagging, the cast-in-place concrete building is designed for zero deflection. An upside-down roofing system with a fluid-applied hot membrane provides waterproofing protection for the gym and auditorium below.

“We have a membrane roofing system that is right on the concrete deck,” Capazzi says. “Then we have an infill layer with the turf on top of it.”

Due to the amount of insulation, the roof is well below the athletic playing surface, which prevents noise or sound vibrations from interrupting events in the auditorium and gym, Capazzi says.

In addition to classroom and recreational space, the school includes health screening and child-care centers and a stand-alone, seven-level parking garage with spaces for 200 cars.

The project was funded through the New Jersey School Development Agency as a public/private partnership between the Union City Redevelopment Agency, the Union City Board of Education, NJSDA and Summit Redevelopers LLC of Union City.

Practice Makes Perfect at Arizona University

HIGHLIGHTS University of Arizona, Tucson • $17.2 million intercollegiate athletics expansion • New 43,150-square-foot indoor practice gym • New 6,150-square-foot diving pool • Expansion and renovation of existing gymnastics building

University of Arizona officials championed training quality and athletic identity with a $17.2 million expansion project that improved practice facilities for several intercollegiate sports programs and set the tone for the athletic area of campus.

A Tucson-based joint venture of TMP Architecture and the Breckenridge Group designed the project, which includes a new 43,150-square-foot indoor practice gym, a 30-foot extension of the gymnastics facility and a new 6,150-square-foot diving pool located in the athletic mall along the east campus entrance. Lloyd Construction Co. Inc. was general contractor on the project, which opened in September 2008.

The indoor gym serves as a practice facility for the university basketball and volleyball programs, which previously did not have a training facility separate from the McKale Center, where competitive events are held.

Features include two competition-sized basketball courts, five mini basketball courts and seven volleyball courts. Lighting in the gym is designed to simulate the lighting conditions in the McKale facility to help maintain player performance between the two buildings.

The two-story gym sits one level below grade in an effort to reduce the building’s impact on the campus, which is adjacent to Tucson’s historic Sam Hughes neighborhood.

“The university wanted to be a good neighbor by providing something on the edge of campus with a friendly scale,” says David Larson, senior vice president at TMP and design director for the project. “We opted for the scale of the one-story building in that location.”

The exterior of the gym features frosted glass, which allows natural light while protecting the privacy of the basketball program, a priority for the university.

“Since it is a practice facility for basketball, the need for privacy is important,” Larson says. “They wanted translucent glass that would let in light, not vision glass.”

In accordance with university preferences, architects designed the gym with a palette of brick, stone and glass to help it relate to older buildings on campus.

“People on campus saw this project as an opportunity to go back to the university’s roots,” Larson says. “A lot of people rallied behind that expression, rather than having a look that would be very modern or abstract.”

However, designers took a more modern tack with the gymnastics expansion. Due to the facility’s location on the edge of the athletic promenade, architects gave it a fresh face with new metal panels and clear signage.

“The promenade takes you from the formal mall deeper into the athletic campus where the McKale Arena and football and baseball venues are located,” Larson says. “It is the beginning of something that gives that area of campus more of an identity, rather than being just a sidewalk path.”

In addition to the new façade, the gymnastics building was extended 30 feet to accommodate full training routines. Prior to the expansion, coaches and gymnasts were forced to improvise routines, as the building was not long enough.

To strengthen the university diving and water polo programs, a new 10-meter diving tower and 17-foot tank were added, reducing demand from swimming, diving and water polo participants on the university’s single 50-meter pool and diving well.

The tower is designed to increase diver safety and serves as a staircase leading to 1-, 3-, 5-, 7.5- and 10-meter platform heights. In addition to diving and water polo training exercises, the new tank can accommodate water polo competitions. New trampoline- and trapeze-style training equipment and a spa for divers were also included with the addition.

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Since opening its doors in 1923, it has always been an ethnic melting pot unlike any other in the city — a place where students learned to accept and respect individual differences. At the height of the civil rights movement, it was the only Seattle venue where Martin Luther King, Jr. chose to speak.

While it had an illustrious history, boasting graduates such as musical legends Quincy Jones and Jimi Hendrix, the school’s luster faded prior to a nearly $88 million renovation that was completed in September.

As a Garfield student, Howard remembers the countless times he was forced to run downstairs, race across the hall and then climb back upstairs to access his third-floor annex classes because the annex and main building weren’t connected.

He recalls the occasions when he and other students and teachers felt earthquake-like vibrations in the library that was erected in the ’70s above the old auditorium. As a student-athlete, Howard is reminded of the days he weight-trained in one of the multiple portables that obscured his alma mater’s grand brick and terra cotta entryway.

Unattractive as they were, those portables provided much needed space that simply wasn’t available within the 85-year-old landmark facility.

“There was a time when I thought this building needed to be torn down,” says Howard, who now serves as Garfield’s principal. “Art classes were held in an old girls’ locker room because there wasn’t enough space for an actual classroom. Science rooms, filled by some of Seattle’s finest students, weren’t designed to accommodate current technology or teaching methods.”

The building still housed manually operated dumbwaiters as the primary vehicle for transporting materials from the first floor. Both the gym and library were inadequate, there was no football field and the list of other challenges — extending to the structure itself — was lengthy.

While Howard wasn’t alone in his belief that Garfield was beyond repair, a broad group of stakeholders consisting of parents, teachers, community members, students and administrators, thought otherwise.

“We went through an exhaustive process of visioning, planning and brainstorming,” says Don Gillmore, Seattle Public Schools building construction manager.

It was clear that stakeholders wanted to preserve the Jacobean-style structure designed by renowned architect Floyd Naramore, he says.

The question was how to take an educationally obsolete school and transform it into a 21st century learning environment. It was critical to define what had to be restored and what had to be pulled out and reconfigured. It was equally critical to contain skyrocketing construction costs.

“Escalation was 12 percent to 15 percent a year,” Gillmore says. “When this project was being bid, we were also competing for labor and materials with the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the Summer Olympics in Beijing.”

Rather than shortchange the project through excessive value engineering, Gillmore, in a tandem decision with program management firm Heery International, recommended the delay of two other bond construction projects into the next bond program, freeing the funds to complete the project as initially envisioned.

“One of our first challenges was really showing off the school in its original architectural splendor,” says Steve Moore, Heery project manager. “Buses and students had long ago stopped using the main entrance which sat atop a huge hill and was surrounded in front by a group of portables.”

While the construction team retained the building’s original concrete, delivered during its initial construction by horse and buggy, the majority of the school’s interior was gutted.

“Our goal was to restore a grand sense of entry and place,” says Tom Bates, principal architect BLRB Architects. “Rather than renovate the gym, which was far too small and badly sited, we decided to design and build a new gym and performing arts center and leverage the site to create a community entrance plaza.”

With significant foundation and restoration work yet to be done, Heery struggled to find a subcontractor interested in the project.

“No one wanted to handle the concrete work in the main building,” Moore says. “The challenge was that there were so many unforseens in the old building. There were, for example, columns that were defined in the original drawings that didn’t physically exist.

Additionally, there was limited access in the maintenance tunnels. Ultimately, we broke the packages apart and created a time and materials package.”

Also remaining were half the school’s single pane windows.

“The windows in the west and north sides had been replaced in the ’80s and weren’t in good shape,” Moore says. “To retain Garfield’s historic sensibility, wereplaced those windows with replicas made specifically for this project. Because the original windows were made of single-pane glass, however, we had to adjust the mechanical system to adapt to the heat gain and loss.”

The most significant replica commissioned during the renovation was the proscenium that framed the auditorium’s stage. Designers converted the auditorium into a cafeteria/commons area.

The most significant replica the team commissioned is the proscenium that once framed the auditorium’s stage. The ornate handcrafted structure had been removed in the ’70s when the multi-story space was divided to accommodate the library.

“Garfield had been lacking a social heart,” Bates says. “There was no place for the students to hang out. We decided to demolish the library, restore the old volume and convert the auditorium into a cafeteria/commons.”

The space also houses the school store, foundation and PTSA offices, and the culinary arts department that provides event catering.

“The new three-story space, which now includes a skylight to bring in ample daylight, has not only become a student gathering place, but a community gathering place as well,” Bates says.

The commons now links directly to the library and classroom wings.

“The library, once the boys and girls gym, now receives ample light from original skylights,” Moore says. “The old library used to be very dark.”

The team retained and restored the gym’s original wood floor.

“While most of the contemporary wood-veneered space is lined with carpet, we kept it off the room’s perimeter so students could see the wood,” Moore says.

Another repurposed feature is the hand-carved computer room entryway, which once served as the original library’s main entryway.

"This was an incredibly complex project,” Gillmore says. “Most people have no clue how much is buried above ceilings and walls for earthquake resistance.”

Moore is certain people also don’t know how difficult mechanical, electrical and data line coordination were.

“The tough part in dealing with buildings like this is arm wrestling for space and determining where new systems will function best for easy maintenance,” he says.

Garfield is also a data hub for all local schools. Data comes here via a main fiber drop, which had to remain functional through the entire project. We placed the equipment in a trailer on the site.”

A recurrent opinion among teachers, who now have offices to call their own, and whose classrooms are wired for technology and are flexible to accommodate future changes, is that the facility far surpasses their expectations.

Alumnus Quincy Jones believes the new performing arts center, named after him, is a superb venue that will inspire a new generation of talented performers. 

“This facility is unbelievable,” Jones said during a press conference to celebrate the performance center’s grand opening. “What they’ve done to renovate it is amazing. I get chills being here.”

There is no mistaking the historic and the contemporary facility.

“We were mandated to differentiate the historic facility from the contemporary facility,” Bates says. “Our design, which is sited 20 feet below the main entrance, provides a more modern, curvilinear aesthetic that’s respectful and subservient to the original rectilinear building.”

Gillmore appreciates Jones’ praise.

“This facility is so much bigger than the old auditorium and has significantly better acoustics by design,” Gillmore says. “It has an orchestra pit with a removable cover that creates a stage extension when it’s not in use. It affords easy access to the catwalks and lights, and slopes in a manner that brings the audience closer to the stage.”

The facility also includes a green room, dressing room and a scenery shop, more curtains and additional side stage space; all features that didn’t previously exist.

More than just a performing arts center, the new building also includes a main gym which has two full-size basketball courts and a full-size center basketball court that seats 1,800 people.

It also houses an auxiliary gym that serves gymnastics and wrestling programs.

When all is said and done, Garfield’s size remains 243,000 square feet.

“We’ve just made better use of the space to provide Garfield students with a facility that will serve them and the surrounding community for decades to come,” Moore says.

Seattle’s Garfield High School formerly served Jimi Hendrix and the new performing arts center’s namesake, Quincy Jones. 

PROJECT DATA

Project Name: Garfield High School
Location: Seattle
Cost: Approximately $88 million
Completion date: September 2008
Architect: BLRB Architects
Program Management:
Heery International

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In the pursuit of knowledge, today’s students sometimes want to put their feet up and lounge with a café latte, while they express fresh epiphanies on a blog or live Internet chat as robotic arms pass research materials to them.

The scene’s comfortable, Jetsonian appeal is what designers of the University of Nevada’s Knowledge Center, in Reno, had in mind when drawing up plans for the 295,000-square-foot, $74 million facility that was completed in August 2008.

School administrators wanted a building that would anchor activities on the north end of the campus and replace the old library, which was considerably smaller in scale.

The architectural team composed of Hershenow + Klippenstein and Dekker/Perich/Sabatini designed the exterior of the facility with red brick to conform to the traditional look of other buildings throughout the campus, but the interior is far from status quo.

The center is a tapestry of technological innovations and creature comforts designed to captivate students and familiarize them with the digital tools they will encounter and utilize after graduation.

Recent studies say students and professors must put a greater emphasis on IT skills training in universities and employers say IT skills will be a necessity for job seekers during the next five years. The technological features within the knowledge center were designed to speak to these concerns, according to planners.

On the ground floor, there is a lab for developing multimedia projects that includes soundproof production rooms for creating and editing audio and video content; a digital projects lab with mobile furniture, white boards, plasma screens and a raised floor for wiring; video conferencing rooms with plasma screens; and digital classrooms with dual or triple-projection for instructional or access-grid node use, video systems and wireless audio.

Extending through the three floors of the five-story building is a 13,000-square-foot automated storage and retrieval system that compacts 20 years of library collection growth in 45 feet of vertical storage. Materials are referenced in an online catalog and retrieved and re-shelved by a robotic mini-crane system.

“There are only about 20 of these libraries in the world,” says Julie Walleisa, architect at Dekker/ Perich/Sabatini. “It is a really smart system.”

An automated retrieval system includes 45 feet of vertical storage at the library.

The robotic system can re-shelve materials in different locations based on frequency of use or subject matter relevancy. The foundation for the storage and retrieval system involved 12 million pounds of concrete and required the largest continuous concrete pour in northern Nevada history, according to designers.

The building also has the distinction of being the second largest public works project in the history of the state.

Nontraditional Spaces

The more traditional spaces in the library are laden with digital accents as well. Study and collaboration rooms on each floor are equipped with plasma screens. Wi-Fi networks cover much of the building and power outlets at study tables and carrels accommodate laptops throughout the building. Public computer stations are also provided on every floor.

The spaces on each floor are arranged to progress from an active computing area on the first floor, and open public spaces on the second floor, through quieter areas of focused collections and reading rooms, to an entire floor of quite study on fifth floor.

“People can hang out on the first floor and if they want a quiet place to study they can go farther up,” Walleisa says.

In direct defiance of disciplinarian rules at traditional libraries, the center also includes a café. Food and drinks are allowed throughout most of the building, underlining the relaxed mood and nontraditional spaces the project team worked to design.

“I was floored to see a pizza delivery guy walking through the library, but it shows that people are using the place as we intended,” Walleisa says.
Spaces reserved for displaying artwork are infused into many areas of the building. An art gallery on the first level has locking display cases and an art hanging system to support rotating exhibits of rare books, art, photographs and manuscripts.

Art and Light

Art displays are planned for several other highly visible walls at the west stairs and at the sides of an atrium, with accent wall colors and lighting coordinated to best display artwork.

In addition to orienting visitors to the building’s layout, the atrium provides daylighting throughout the facility. While natural lighting was considered during the planning, computer modeling was used to ensure light would infiltrate at the bottom floors without overwhelming the upper levels.

“Tremendous emphasis was given to daylighting and acoustics throughout the building, as well as green design and energy modeling,” Walleisa says.
Other energy-saving features include an automated lighting control system, skylights above open workspaces for staff and a curtainwall with shading devices and light shelves.

“This building is supposed to last for 100 years, and I think we designed something that lives up to that,” Walleisa says.

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The school construction process is full of potential pitfalls, but projects become exponentially more complex when an American architectural firm works in a country that is thousands of miles away, where the language, culture and construction protocols are different.

As an international design firm with offices in the United States and abroad, Perkins Eastman has 10 years of experience working in China, but the design and construction process still presents a unique challenge.

The firm is working on a multi-component project at Concordia International School that has reshaped the campus with an expanded elementary school, a new fine arts center and an expanded high school that is under construction. The school provides lessons based on U.S. curriculum and Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod principles for a growing population of pre-K to 12th-grade students.

The school opened 10 years ago with 22 students and 14 faculty members and has grown to accommodate 1,000 students from 30 countries and 100 teachers. It has witnessed a 33 percent annual growth in recent years.

International Delivery

The elementary school and fine arts center projects took coordination with the firm’s New York, Stamford, Conn., and Shanghai offices, creating a logistical puzzle that involved several designers in different times zones.

The offices coordinated with electronic correspondences, video conferencing technology and occasional face-to-face visits at various locations worldwide.

“Having all of these people — not only involved with one project but with three different offices within our firm — it certainly is a challenge to be able to contribute over two very fast time zones,” says Aaron Schwarz, a principal and director of Perkins Eastman at the firm’s New York headquarters. “It was a pretty interesting process.”

He says Perkins Eastman’s office in Shanghai, lead by managing principal Ron Vitale, was crucial to the project’s success and created a physical presence for the firm that allowed for cultural adjustments and mitigation of potential problems.

“With our offices in New York and Stamford, we are clearly coming from a background of western cultures and western education, which the international school wants to have a big foothold in,” Schwarz says. “At the same time, Ron is right there with his team and he can say what works from a construction point of view, how cultural changes are made and other issues.”

The firm has been active in China since 1998 and opened the Shanghai office, where 20 people are now employed, in 2004.

“Building internationally takes a completely different understanding of how to move forward with a project and get it implemented,” Schwarz says. “It is not at all the same as what we do here in the states.”

Language barriers were navigated with nearly 40 Perkins Eastman employees who speak Mandarin, but the bidding, scheduling and construction processes required flexibility from the firm.

“It really helps for us to be here because construction does not happen with the same process that it does in the U.S.,” Vitale says. “It really requires day-to-day contact and monitoring of the site.”

The construction process in China is more fast paced than in the United States and not as well organized, according to Vitale. Architects do not get a list of shop drawing submittals in advance and they just “kind of happen,” he says.

“When things do come up with this sort of unannounced process, at least we’re here to address it and we can contact our colleagues back in the U.S. and get them to focus on what’s important at that time,” he says.

Concordia’s Community

Plans for the new facilities at Concordia were initiated in 2006 when school officials hired Perkins Eastman to revise the master plan for the campus after land that the school was considering for an expansion was purchased by developers.

A rooftop art terrace  provides a view of the cityscape for students working on art projects.

“They were left with a shortage of acreage, but they were able to build up a floor-to-area ratio and that had a great influence over the way that current projects are being developed,” Vitale says.

A suburban building model was abandoned for a more condensed urban model that utilizes rooftop areas for play and art spaces. The rooftop areas posed an early challenge with some teachers who not completely sold on the concept.

“In urban settings you don’t have much of a choice — you’ve got to go up,” says Louise Schini Weber, elementary school and founding principal of Concordia. “Getting teachers to appreciate the rooftop playground was a challenge this first year, but one that has been overcome.”

Despite the need for a more dense campus, efforts were made to break down the scale to create spaces that are child-friendly.

The 35,500-square-foot fine arts center is broken down with a large box that houses a theater and dark performances spaces, alongside a smaller box that houses rehearsal space.

Straying from the windowless, artificially lit practice spaces of yesteryear, the space was designed to provide daylight and transparency.

The two forms are embraced by a folding roof that shades a rooftop art terrace while covering most of an exterior wall.

A land shortage forced planners to take a more vertical, urban approach at the school.

“They sound like very complex ideas, but when you look at the form, it’s very identifiable so students and faculty understand,” Schwarz says.

The theme of transparency and flexibility is repeated throughout the campus in classroom spaces and other areas.

“There is a general desire for transparency on the campus for all of the buildings,” Vitale says. “It’s not just for special dynamics, but also for safety, observation and other key education purposes.”

Classrooms in the elementary school utilize a team-teaching approach with two teachers for about 40 students and discovery rooms that provide hands-on tools for interactive learning and experimentation.

“They were really looking at developing a classroom model where there is the ability for team teaching and unique adjacencies with spaces that would allow them to maximize use of the facility and do multiple activities in one space,” says Pamela Loeffelman, managing principal of the Samford office.

Flexibility is encouraged with rolling doors, similar to those commonly applied as garage doors, to separate interior and exterior spaces. The doors can limit access to the discovery rooms, reconfigure spaces for large or small groups, or provide access to outdoor play areas.

“We have these huge doors that go up vertically to open out into the grass area,” Weber says. “They have such fun using them because kids can go outside and into the motor skills area, and back.”

Primary colors were used throughout the elementary school’s interior.

The flexible learning and play spaces reinforce the strong sense of community that is emphasized at the school, Weber says.

“The kids can flow back and forth whenever teachers want them to and it builds a community between the two groups,” she says.

Planners also worked to provide community spaces at the school that could be used when classes are not in session — an important factor for the expatriates who relocated to China for business reasons.

Spaces for adult soccer leagues, flea markets and continuing education are provided at the campus, Vitale says.

“There is a community aspect that becomes a real key element in the design of these campuses,” he says. “All of these students hold foreign passports and their parents generally work for foreign companies in China.”

Aesthetic Considerations

In addition to promoting community and flexibility through design, planners introduced several materials that pushed the project’s aesthetic beyond the bricks and mortar of traditional construction.

“We looked at expanding the palette that was there and really played with some great new materials to create a new scale and texture and more color at that campus,” Vitale says.

Zinc paneling, terracotta baguettes, sunscreens and low-emissions glass are complemented by colorful interiors that were designed to provide an inviting environment and assist with wayfinding.

Primary colors are generously applied in the elementary school spaces and colors were used with accent walls, stairways and art areas.

“We used color to identify spaces by function and by use,” Vitale says. “Architecturally it works in helping to understand the building design and with wayfinding.”

The pairing of flexible design spaces and aesthetic enhancements with the community concepts and nontraditional approach to learning spaces provided the ideal climate for a client-architect relationship, according to the planners at Perkins Eastman.

“International schools offer a great opportunity for innovation,” Vitale says. “I think some of the international schools we are doing offer greater opportunity for innovation than the public school market. It’s not just from a design perspective, but also in terms of the curriculum and educational programs.”

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