Studio PAULBAUT Paul Kweton, AIA

CV, CONTACT,


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IT Building Relocation (Morris Architects)

2010

IT Building

This project is a new information technology and media center for a community college located in Santa Monica California. The college currently has an enrollment of 30,000 students and is experiencing rapid growth that requires a major upgrade to its current information technology department and computing infrastructure. The project includes 12,000 square feet of new space and approximately 6000 square feet of renovation to the existing campus library. In addition to the specific functional and maintenance requirements of an IT/media center, the college had three principal architectural goals. The first was to reverse the current and all too typical trend to sequester the information technology staff away in residual space with little or no natural light; the College specifically desired for the department to be visible and seen as the equal of the academic faculty. The second objective was to use the new building mass to strengthen the definition of the southern edge of the campus. Most of the recent construction has been on the northern portion on the campus and the project site lies at the terminus of the schools major pedestrian core. Given that the buildings mass is rather small to convincingly define both a street edge and the terminus of a major quaudrangle-greenspace, the design challenge was to make the building appear larger than it actually is. The Colleges final wish is that the building be a model of integrated green technologies that goes beyond LEED minimums and the campus recent flirtations with photovoltaics.

DAYLIGHTING

The building envelopes vertical surfaces are almost entirely insulated glass modulated with a gradient fritt pattern to allow abundant natural light to the buildings interior without creating computer screen glare.

VENTILATION

The buildings skin is operable to facilitate fresh air movement and ventilation across the buildings cross section. The building utilizes a folded concrete roof plane to exploit the Venturi effects ability to increase airspeed.

RAINWATER HARVESTING

The independent concrete roof is additionally formed and contoured to collect rainwater.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

The folded concrete roof plane is engineered to create a pinch-point between its bottom surface and the roof to optimally increase and direct wind flow thru an array of small wind turbines. (Text by Douglas Oliver)