GOLETA, Calif. — Tenaya Towers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) was recently honored at the 2018 Sustainable Innovation Awards. The project, a pair of six-story towers, received a Merit Award in the Energy and Atmosphere category. The Sustainable Innovation Awards (SIA) program is hosted by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Los Angeles chapter and recognizes projects that demonstrate exemplary performance that goes above and beyond standard rating systems.

Considered to be Los Angeles’ Oscars of green building, the SIAs affirm a project team’s commitment to a sustainable built environment and reflect the chapter’s emphasis on energy and water savings, air quality, good design, community engagement and equity. The SIAs are open to projects certified under any sustainability rating system.

“The Sustainable Innovation Awards recognize projects that go above and beyond credit achievement,” said SIA Co-chair Patti Harburg-Petrich of BuroHappold. “The project teams honored this year employed creative strategies that we hope will inspire the design and construction community to push the limits of standard practice. Thank you to all who submitted projects for consideration.”

Located on UCSB’s campus in Goleta, Calif. the Tenaya Towers provide space for student housing, study lounges, recreation rooms, and a market that is open to the school community as well as the public.

Tenaya Towers contain student housing and a convenience store that serves the university and adjacent community. Living areas open onto balconies that overlook an outdoor plaza, while bedrooms are situated away from outdoor activity. Study lounges and recreation rooms are centrally located to support academic and social life.

Perforated screens on the building facades provide shading, help keep the buildings cool, and serve as protective barriers. Larger openings in the screens enhance daylighting and views. Additional screens on operable windows in bedrooms and study lounges provide shading and act as guardrails for each unit. A freestanding pavilion in the plaza contains a recreation room and study lounge for students.

The towers define a central outdoor plaza that total 105,000 square feet, Certified LEED Platinum, the towers feature natural ventilation, rooftop solar hot water collectors, and greywater use. Sustainable features in the site plan include a stormwater management system with bioswales, bio-retention and mechanical filters to protect adjacent wetlands, and ground cover with drought-tolerant plants.

Tenaya Towers also features natural ventilation, rooftop solar hot water collectors, and greywater use. The building envelopes are carefully designed to maximize thermal performance, contributing to energy consumption that is 20 percent below California’s Title 24 baseline. The efficient use of building materials also helped reduce the project’s carbon footprint.

The Tenaya Towers are part of the UCSB San Joaquin Apartments and Precinct Improvements Project, a campus master plan led by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP (SOM). SOM worked together with three other architecture firms to design the various residences and dining commons—a collaborative approach that infuses the project with architectural diversity. SOM’s Los Angeles office designed Tenaya Towers, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects and Kevin Daly Architects designed additional residential complexes, and Kieran Timberlake designed the dining commons.  

Harper Construction, BuroHappold, Stantec, Sherwood Design Engineers, Tom Leader Studio, Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design, Newson Brown, and Jensen Hughes are also listed as part of the project team.

“The projects and people honored by the Sustainable Innovation Awards exemplify thought leadership and creativity in their design solutions to site and building challenges,” said SIA Co- chair Amelia Feichtner of the City of Santa Monica. “It is inspiring that our community is advancing sustainability in a wide range of project scales and in both private and public development.”

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NEW YORK — Barnard College recently celebrated the grand opening of the Cheryl and Philip Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning, the new hub of academic and intellectual life on the college’s New York City campus. The 128,000-square-foot building, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM), is a new place of interdisciplinary scholarship and a new epicenter of undergraduate learning serving both Barnard and Columbia University students, at the heart of Barnard College’s Morningside Heights campus.

“SOM designed The Milstein Center to serve as a crossroads for the campus, community, and its New York City partners — a place where students and faculty across disciplines can learn through doing, engage in robust dialogue, and visualize ideas,” said SOM Senior Consulting Design Partner Roger Duffy. “We worked closely with the Barnard community to create a multi-modal place that supports the college’s interdisciplinary curriculum through studying, creating, sharing, researching, and synthesizing all forms of knowledge and data. And, because higher education is perpetually changing, we integrated new technology and built in the essential flexibility to equip and serve Barnard well into its future.”

The Milstein Center is a new kind of library. It celebrates Barnard’s collections and archives, while providing new pedagogical opportunities for faculty and scaffolding new learning experiences for its students. The design infuses a variety of study spaces with opportunities for creative, exploratory learning centers and service points. It provides settings suited to individuals, small teams, and large groups, along with state-of-the-art multimedia centers.

The library links all departments and disciplines across the campus — physically, digitally, and philosophically. It is connected to a range of flexible learning spaces, including centers for pedagogy, empirical reasoning, digital humanities, design, and media, as well as a movement lab. Above the library is the Vagelos Computational Science Center, where students and faculty can collaborate on pioneering research in data and computation. Careful lighting design throughout the building combines natural light, programmed lighting scenes, and individual controls to enhance learning environments while contributing to energy savings.

In addition to the library, the Milstein Center provides conference facilities, interdisciplinary workspaces for four academic departments, and a new home for the Athena Center for Leadership Studies and the Barnard Center for Research on Women. The ground floor features a small coffee bar that is open to the public, while the building’s upper stories accommodate faculty offices.

Targeting LEED v3 Silver certification, the Milstein Center continues Barnard College’s tradition of sustainable campus construction projects and reinforces the college’s commitment to climate action. The building’s design features support both Barnard’s environmental curriculum and the behavior change programs being enacted by the student body and faculty. Aligned with the college’s vision to build a more sustainable campus and reduce carbon emissions, The Milstein Center is designed to target 15 percent energy cost savings compared to ASHRAE 90.1 2007, 33 percent water savings within the building, 50 percent water savings for landscape irrigation, and 90 percent construction waste diversion.

“The opening of The Milstein Center marks an important milestone for Barnard,” said Sian Leah Beilock, President of Barnard College. “Its completion supports the creation of new pathways for learning that build on our foundation of academic excellence and inquiry across disciplines. We are tremendously thankful for the Milsteins’ support of this beautiful building, and for SOM’s innovative design that will inspire students, faculty, staff, alumnae, and friends of the College for years to come.”

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