Judges' Comments
- N/A
Project Data:
Completion Date: 2/2/2015
Square Footage: 44389
Building Use: Higher Education Vocational Training Facility
Location: Torrance, CA
Project Description:
The El Camino College Center for Applied Technology building is a replacement project for an outdated, unsafe, existing facility. Facing the main community arterial highway, Manhattan Beach Boulevard, the new building echoes the prevalent campus 50’s International Style architecture with a modern reinterpretation of form, coloration and materiality. This vocational training facility looks toward the future and reflects the intention of business partnerships to facilitate student integration into the work world. The labs and lab yards are safe, clean and supported by ubiquitous technology. Philosophically, the traditional shops model has evolved to a hybrid interdisciplinary model.
PLANNING PROCESS:
An intense programming and planning effort was undertaken to create a collective understanding of the future of delivering the building’s vocational technologies safely and effectively. Tours were conducted to investigate alternative environments and create a benchmark from which the program could evolve. The process created a “think different” mode embraced and championed by the key stakeholders. A series of on campus charrettes were held with key project stakeholders including staff, students, administrators and maintenance and operations staff. Multiple concepts were explored which led to a single concept that was shaped by the project committee and campus facility committee.
DESIGN:
The primary goal for the building’s design was to shift the traditional shops model to a new model where: dirty messy grease-filled shops became clean organized and pristine; the gender centric environment became equal and integrated; individual work became teamwork; disciplinary became interdisciplinary; college generated instruction became college/partnership instruction; dark and noisy became light-filled and acoustically appropriate; inwardly focused and hidden away became visible accessible and expressive.
The building being located on the edge of campus has two faces: one toward campus and one toward the community. The campus face provides a lobby/event space that punctuates a prominent east-west campus walkway connecting the major parking structure to the campus. The lobby located along the pathway reveals the best ideas and events that occur in the building. The community face hides the auto and welding yards that occur along that elevation and focuses the eye upon soaring light monitors that make the lab spaces feel as if they are outside. The two entries, central lobby and circulation route are linked by a blue “street” (El Camino blue). The Street provides easy way-finding for students and staff and a method of forcing a vocational convergence. Each disparate vocational world is now mixes on a single pathway with casual student interaction spaces to encourage interdisciplinary thinking.
The building is organized with technical labs surrounding a central dispensary tool room. One of the key challenges was to create an organizational system to layout the plethora of equipment that each of the four labs of Automotive Collision Repair, Automotive Technology, Air-conditioning/Heating/Ventilation, and Welding had. The organizational system listed each type of equipment, its infrastructure needs whether it was new equipment or brought over from the old building and the system of attachment to the structure.
C.O.T.E. | Committee on the Environment
Submitted By: |
tBP/Architecture |
Design Architect: |
Gary P. Moon, AIA |
Associate Architect or Firm: |
NA |
Landscape Architect: |
Land Architecture, Landscape Architecture |
Owner / Developer: |
El Camino Community College District |
Engineer: |
IDS, Structural Engineering S&K Engineers, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering VA Consulting, Civil Engineering |
General Contractor: |
Pinner Construction, General Contractor |
Consultant: |
Wave Guide, Technology/AV/IT/Security PAL id studio, Furniture Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, Hardware |
Photographer: |
Bill Hall Photography, Photographer |
El Camino College Center for Applied Technology
Category
Commercial