Judges' Comments
- N/A
Project Data:
Completion Date: 3/2/2018
Square Footage: 52000
Building Use: Higher Education Student Services Center
Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Project Description:
Located in the geometric center of the Golden West College campus facing the central quad, the intentionally iconic center will create a welcoming, transparent core that will immediately orient students to the programs and services that the College offers. A curvilinear porch will draw students into a flowing 2 story atria that will allow them to locate student services functions from one main vantage point as well as serve as a backdrop to graduation ceremonies. This Student Services Center is envisioned as the campus portal that supports student success by displaying the campus’ student service offerings while providing a “living room” and center for the campus. The architecture responds sympathetically to the original campus architect William Pereira’s vision of a megastructure organizing concept where a ubiquitous concrete waffle-slab and column structural grid bounds every uneventful building.
DESIGN
The Golden West College experience is unique because the total campus, which was designed and built at one time by William Pereira, is dogmatic and cohesive. He was particularly interested in creating a futuristic vision that consisted of an overarching grid that would extend potentially everywhere. It was a realization of Superstudio’s notable 1969 Continuous Monument: An Architectural Model for Total Urbanization. Their anti-architectural proposals used grid systems as a way to mediate space. Every building was non-architecture and was subservient to the whole.
In contrast to Periera’s vision of the College, this center is designed to be a contextual but iconic building that would be easy to describe to potential new students wondering what Golden West College could offer them. The College, being in Huntington Beach, identifies itself as part of the surf culture and as such wanted an easily describable and contextually contrasting feature. Hence the waves rolling through the building’s main space. The curves are in strong contrast to the grid. The curves also reveal themselves as echoes within the building in the form of desks where students are aided by staff. This is in strong contrast to the rectilinear workstations of the staff.
The main body of the building is organized to encourage students to access the building from any of the four cardinal points. This concept manifested itself in the main circulation and massing which is organized like a pinwheel. The four quadrants organize the eight functional areas located within the building (4 per floor). Each of the four pinwheel volumes are pulled apart and the absence of the concrete grid becomes apparent.
Since the conceptual direction was a departure, the materiality was chosen to highlight the difference while at the same time reflecting todays construction technology. In Pereira’s day, concrete was the structural system of choice, today it is steel. In Pereira’s day the box was stucco, today it is a rainscreen system. All the materials were chosen for their utilization of recycled content and longevity.
Five key design elements enumerated in the building design to create “identity” and cohesiveness:
1. Entry: The entry portal is the first introduction to a new student. It is unique, clearly defined and welcoming. It opens to the formal central quad and is visible from all areas of the campus.
2. Threshold: Just as the existing structures create gateways between spaces of different scales, the building creates thresholds and expansive views through the integration of building placement, site elements, and landscape.
3. Transparency: The new building has expansive glass areas to express the internal programmatic functions, to reveal students getting support, eating, playing, conversing, studying etc. and to take advantage of the views.
4. Wave: The curvilinear wave welcomes and guides students into the heart of the center. It relates to Huntington Beach’s surf culture and the Golden West College and Coast Community Colleges’ branding.
5. Tubes: The four distinct tubes each pinwheeling from the center are the functional areas which become the dominant building in stark contrast to the overarching mega grid.
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: |
Melendrez, Landscape Architecture |
Owner / Developer: |
Coast Community College District |
Engineer: |
VCA Engineers, Inc., Civil and Structural Engineering P2S Engineering, Mechanical Engineering FBA Engineering, Electrical Engineering |
General Contractor: |
(Contractor: Multi-Prime) Sundt Construction, Inc., Construction Manager: |
Consultant: |
|
Photographer: |
NA |
Golden West College Student Services Center
Category
Commercial