AIA recently made us aware of this year’s CAE Educational Facility Design Awards. The purpose of the design awards program is to identify trends and emerging ideas, honor excellence in planning and design, and disseminate knowledge about best practices in educational and community facilities. Check out the list of 13 after the break, including several of the firms we have previously featured.
The 2011 CAE Educational Facility Design Awards jury includes: Peter C. Lippman, Assoc. AIA (jury chair), JCJ Architecture; R. Thomas Hille, AIA, Tabula Rasa Architecture + Design; Christian Long (Educator), Be Playful / Design & Studio; David Schrader, AIA, SchraderGroup and Susan Whitmer (Researcher), Herman Miller, Inc.
13 awards were issued in three categories which include Citation, Merit and Excellence.
If you would like more information or images of these projects, please contact Matt Tinder at mtinder@aia.org.
2011 CAE Educational Facility Design Awards recipients:
Excellence
Royal Conservatory, TELUS Centre, Toronto, Ontario Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg (KPMB) Architects
The TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning is the culmination of two decades of planning and design to build a new home for the Royal Conservatory (RCM). The unique hybrid of teaching, rehearsal and performance promotes the intersection of student, professional and public life, and allows the RCM to deliver its educational and public programming locally and worldwide. The project involved the historic restorative and adaptive reuse of two Victorian masonry buildings and the addition of a major new pavilion housing practice studios, classrooms and the 1,135-seat Koerner Hall.
GFS, Sustainable Urban Science Center, Philadelphia SMP Architects
This project is a state-of-the-art lab classroom building that celebrates green strategies including rainwater harvesting, green roofs, and raingarden landscapes. Focusing the design on didactic opportunities, SMP Architects and the consultant team worked closely with the Germantown Friends School community to support student engagement in this laboratory for learning – within, around, and in some cases, on top of the facility. Embracing a “Science in Sight” vision for advancing sustainability through conversation and exploration, the design supports the school’s mission of lifelong learning and stewardship of the natural environment.
The Saguaro Building at Mesa Community College, Mesa, Arizona SmithGroup
The Saguaro Building works to organize an extraordinarily rich collection of program elements into a stimulating and visceral educational event. Comprised of a rare mix of science, campus and performance functions, the facility is sited on a picturesque and preserved desert campus. A black box theater is designed as an iconic element that punctuates the campus’ presence amongst surrounding stucco strip malls, while a two-story lobby is designed to take on the role of the Student Union, with its cyber café, terrariums, and educational immersion elements.
Merit
The Learning Spring School, New York City Platt Byard Dovell White Architects
Learning Spring School contains academic, athletic and special needs spaces arranged as an eight story vertical campus for children with autism. A gymnasium, library and lunchroom are located on the bottom two floors. Classrooms are paired, sharing resource areas, study rooms and toilets. An aluminum and stainless steel sunscreen supported by an external steel armature drapes the facade’s aluminum, glass and zinc curtain wall. A terracotta rain screen flanks the adjacent buildings and extends along the base. Between the two systems, a vertical band of tubular channel glass marks circulation.
Springfield Literacy Center, Springfield, Pennsylvania Burt Hill, a Stantec Company
The design response for the new Literacy Center is singularly focused on enhancing literacy instruction. The building is situated on a site that is a natural oasis within the suburban community context. The building design is infused into the landscape, naturally stepping with the topography, while engaging with the tree canopy. The natural material palette of the design complements woodlands with transparency blurring the line of interior and exterior. The built environment specifically responds to the rigorous literacy curriculum.
Gary Comer College Prep, Chicago John Ronan Architects
The spring green-colored metal cladding of this charter high school in a gritty Chicago neighborhood reflects the youth and optimism of its faculty and students. Perforated metal siding on the exterior serves as a sunscreen, and allows clear views from the interior while maintaining visual privacy and security from outside. Glass walls between the hallway and classrooms reinforce the school’s philosophy of transparency and accountability, reflecting its ideals and shaping its culture. The corridor glazing allows daylight to enter the classroom from two sides, due to extensive skylights in the plan’s interior.
Marysville Getchell High School Campus, Marysville, Washington DLR Group
Nestled among second-growth trees and forest wetlands, the Marysville Getchell High School Campus stimulates a student’s senses with an innovative learning environment. DLR Group’s design enables great flexibility in the administration of student-focused learning. The design arranges four, independent learning communities around a campus commons. Within each learning community, a series of interconnected, flexible learning spaces support the educational approach. There are no corridors or fixed classrooms. It’s this openness and flexibility that make every space a learning space at Marysville Getchell to encourage student growth as global citizens
Park Shops, Raleigh, North Carolina Pearce Brinkley Cease + Lee
Rather than tear down a 1914 campus building, this historic structure was gutted and transformed into a 21st century classroom building. Where there were once welding classes there are now laboratories, long distance learning classrooms, advising offices, and an internet cafe. This multi-disciplinary facility mixes the humanities with the sciences, creating a unique opportunity to foster dialogue between the disciplines by extending educational spaces into public spaces. The challenge of dealing with a historic structure created an opportunity to shape a unique educational environment where the university’s history is preserved and on display.
James I Swenson Civil Engineering Building, Duluth, Minnesota Ross Barney Architects
This project, a 35,300-square-foot LEED Gold certified building, has integrated sustainable strategies including; increased ventilation, use of low-emitting construction materials, advanced lighting control, advanced thermal comfort control, access to daylight and views for occupied spaces, and the use of an under-floor air distribution system. The design highlights construction and site systems related to the field of civil engineering including oversized scuppers that channel storm water from the roof to the trio the monumental French drain and two 20 ton gantry cranes located within the 25+ feet high Structural Lab.
The Center for Jefferson Fellows, The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia VMDO Architects PC
Through its rich interplay of spaces, the Center is designed to facilitate conversation, study, research and learning — vital components of an intellectual community. It is meant to act as a source of inspiration, a place of interaction, and a locus for the exchange of ideas. Abundant windows and clerestory glazing daylight all of the building’s spaces as well as offer transparency to the courtyard and the additional wings so that Fellows are aware of their colleagues and can engage them in conversation or gain momentum for their own scholarship.
Citation
Mothers’ Club Family Learning Center, Pasadena, California Harley Ellis Devereaux
The new permanent facility for Mothers’ Club Family Learning Center recently opened in an underserved neighborhood of northwest Pasadena. The new child development center is an inviting and economical facility for multi-generational learning. Comprising approximately 10,000-square-foot of converted factory space and over 5,000-square-foot of outdoor, age appropriate play spaces, the new $2.5 Million facility includes a research library and administration area, parent training seminar rooms, demonstration kitchen and four indoor classrooms accommodating up to 80 children. This Gold LEED facility acts as “a life catalyst within a light-filled nurturing oasis”.
St. Albans School, Marriott Hall, Washington, DC Skidmore Owings & Merrill
The design reinforces the primacy of the Olmsted landscape and the site’s principal icon, Washington National Cathedral. The project, which includes 35,000 square feet of new space and an equal amount of renovated space, seamlessly interconnects previously disparate internal floor levels and external public spaces. The extension also creates better physical and visual connections to the Cathedral, enhances views to central Washington, improves potential circulation sequences and interconnects potential interior and exterior spaces. The new spaces include classrooms, faculty offices, athletic fields and a performing arts theatre.
PACCAR Hall, Foster School of Business, Seattle LMN Architects
At the heart of the Foster School of Business’ transformation is the concept of integrated communities, where the social environment, natural environment and campus context are embraced as interrelated influences in the architectural experience. Common areas are organized as a series of interconnected spaces that function in many different combinations—from small groups to large gatherings, encompassing a full spectrum of informal student activities, regular programs and special events. The 133,000-square-foot PACCAR Hall includes various classroom and lecture hall spaces, faculty and administrative offices, café and a series of open public spaces.
