SANTA BARBARA, Calif.—Building firm C.W. Driver Companies has completed work on the $70 million, four-story Interactive Learning Pavilion at UC Santa Barbara. The new facility adds classrooms, lecture halls as well as discussion rooms to this picturesque campus located on a spit of land overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The 95,000-square-foot structure at UCSB offers approximately 2,000 seats of classroom space across its various lecture halls, including areas dedicated specifically for project-based learning. Each of the building’s 32 classrooms and lecture halls offer capacity anywhere from 30 to 350 students.

The center of the pavilion features a breezeway between two of the major buildings that make up the Interactive Learning Pavilion. Exposed terraces and stairs receive ample sunlight, and the upper levels allow for stellar views of the campus as well as the nearby ocean. In an effort at green building, the pavilion is entirely powered by electricity and no natural gas, which allows the facility to be designated as LEED Gold.

C.W. Driver worked with LMN Architects to realize the project. LMN Architects is headquartered in Seattle. Their design for the learning pavilion took into consideration “the history of UCSB and its seascape vistas [so] the building has been envisioned as a microcosm of the societal and natural conditions around the site,” as per the firm’s website.

According to personnel from C.W. Driver, realizing the learning pavilion required extensive planning due to the site’s centrality within the bike-friendly UCSB campus.

“The project…required an early re-route of bicycle and pedestrian lanes, as well as planning for just-in-time deliveries in the early morning to keep clear of student traffic,” said Jeff Bara, Senior Project Manager at C.W. Driver. “We worked closely with the university to develop off-site staging where delivery vehicles could enter the campus individually, therefore limiting the number of trucks on campus at any given time and minimizing the impact of construction on the community.”

For its work at the pavilion, C.W. Driver was awarded the Liberty Mutual Insurance Safety Commendation Gold Award from the University Controlled Insurance Program (UCIP), which recognizes a project demonstrating an outstanding safety record.

“Looking at the early plan sets, we knew we were building something unique and beautiful,” Tom Jones, Project Executive with C.W. Driver, said in a subsequent statement emailed to School Construction News. “Speaking for the management and crews, we were all motivated by the stunning design and reaching the finish product. The end result was worth it.”

C.W. Driver Companies has been in operation in California since 1919. Their various educational projects across the Golden State include the Pomona-Pitzer College Rains Athletic Center; CSU Dominguez Hill’s Science and Innovation Building; CSU San Bernardino’s Coyote Village and Coyote Commons; MiraCosta College Chemistry & Biotechnology Building; Orange Coast College’s Language Arts and Social Science Building, Kinesiology and Athletics Complex and Student Union Complex; Chapman University’s Keck Center for Science and Engineering; and Cal Poly Pomona’s Student Services Building.

The firm is ranked in Engineering News Record’s Top 150 General Contractors and Top 100 Construction Managers. The firm operates from offices in Los Angeles, Rancho Cucamonga, Anaheim, San Diego and Carlsbad.

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SANTA BARBARA, Calif.—The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is undergoing an expansion project to add another teaching building to its seaside campus along the “American Riviera.”

The $78 million, 95,000-square-foot project will feature lecture halls, learning spaces and flexible discussion rooms. The building will be a project-based learning hub for UCSB, comprising 32 classrooms and lecture halls, each of which will be able to handle anywhere from 30 to 350 students each.

The new building was designed by LMN Architects of Seattle and was meant to both meld in with the Southern California construction motif as well as take advantage of the natural elements of the surrounding campus area, which abuts the ocean. LMN’s design aims to achieve, at a minimum, LEED Gold certification.

Directly outside the new learning annex, there will be spaces for nearly 2,000 bicycles to be parked—rather appropriate for a Southern California college. Also, an exterior “street corridor” will encourage interaction between students and faculty as they walk between and among UCSB’s buildings. Furthermore, views from the upper-floor classroom windows will allow students and faculty views of the nearby UCSB Pardall Mall to the west, Library Mall to the north and, of course, views of the Pacific Ocean and offshore Channel Islands to the south.

General contractor C.W. Driver Companies broke ground on the construction in March. Project executive Tom Jones said that his firm was charged with fashioning a classroom building that would be a major nexus of educational activity at the heart of the campus.

“Leveraging our expertise in higher education, we recognize the need to create a dynamic environment that not only emphasizes academic inquiry for students, but also fosters interpersonal connections that inspire scholarly ambition, creativity and discoveries with a wide-ranging impact,” Jones said in a recent statement.

Added Liana Khammash, project manager for UC Santa Barbara: “As our university rapidly expands, exceeding our existing classroom capacity, there is a strong need for the new 95,000-square-foot classroom building. This new building will seamlessly integrate into the surrounding public spaces, which have been conceived as extensions of life on campus.”

The project is on the fast track, with a projected completion time of Winter 2022.

General contractor C.W. Driver Companies is over a century old, and in the past few years has expanded its school construction work in California, including in San Diego County and Orange County. The firm recently appeared in Engineering News Record’s Top 150 General Contractors and Top 100 Construction Managers.

Last fall, UCSB also broke ground on a $5 million tennis facility. The campus currently is home to over 26,000 students.

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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) received its third LEED Platinum certification for existing buildings — operations and maintenance — for Bren Hall in 2017. This latest certification makes Bren Hall the first building in the country to achieve LEED Platinum three times over.

While this third certification is a clear delineation of the “greenness” of the building, Bren Hall was already recognized as the nation’s “greenest laboratory building” just after its initial construction was completed in 2002 due to its energy-efficient design, and was the first laboratory building in the country to receive LEED Platinum certification for new buildings.

In addition, Bren Hall managed to break another record in 2009 when it earned its second LEED Platinum certification for existing buildings. Bren Hall earned the most recent third certification for operations and maintenance with 93 points.

The list of what makes Bren Hall so green is lengthy. Some of the many features that stand out include natural ventilation — Bren Hall was sited to take advantage of ocean breezes. Offices have operable windows and transoms, so no air-conditioning is required. Heaters in the offices automatically shut off when windows are opened. In addition, Bren Hall is connected to a multi-building chilled water loop on campus to provide cost-effective cooling to the laboratory wing. The Bren chiller is able to take on a portion of the total campus load. The shared system saves as much as 85 percent runtime on the chiller.

Bren Hall also has low-impact restrooms with low-flow fixtures throughout the building. Toilets on the first floor use reclaimed water, and automatic flush valves are used on all toilets. Automatic valves are used on all bathroom sinks. Each of the 10 waterless urinals saves approximately 40,000 gallons of water per year, according to UCSB’s list of sustainable features on the website. White cap roofing is used to reduce “heat island” effect, and large windows are used throughout the building to reduce the need for electricity for lighting. The lighting plan incorporates energy-efficient fixtures and bulbs with daylighting controls for motion, heat and ambient light.

The list of sustainable features of the three-times-Platinum laboratory goes on, and so does the list of awards and honors that the building has earned. In addition to the three LEED Platinum certifications, Bren Hall earned the Flex Your Power Energy Efficiency Award in February 2004 and the International Interior Design Association Environmental Award in May 2003. Bren Hall was the featured site for the Parade of Green Buildings in April 2003 and won the Goleta Valley Beautiful Award in November 2002.

Amongst the organizations that awarded honors to UCSB in 2017 — in addition to the USGBC’s latest Platinum certification — are the Princeton Review, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education and the National Recycling Coalition.

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