The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE) has selected nine educational facilities for this year’s CAE Education Facility Design Awards.
The program honors educational facilities that the jury believes should serve as an example of a superb place in which to learn, furthering the client's mission, goals and educational program while demonstrating excellence in architectural design.
The jury for the 2015 Educational Facility Design Awards includes: J. Stuart Pettitt, AIA (Chair); Straub Pettitt Yaste Architects; William C. Ayers, education advocate; Victoria S. Bergsagel, Architects of Achievement; Mark Kranz, AIA, SmithGroup JJR; and Robert Miklos, FAIA, designLAB architects.
More information about the recipients here.
Berklee Tower; Berklee College of Music; Boston
Award of Excellence
William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc.
All images courtesy of AIA
This 16-story mixed-use building is on the Berklee College of Music campus. A 40-foot-high performance and dining space shows student performances nightly and fronts onto a major Boston thoroughfare. Twelve floors, housing 380 students plus a fitness center and music practice rooms, sit above the performance space. Six double-height lounges on the residential floors link two floors of students. Two floors below grade house the largest recording studio complex in New England.
Health Sciences Education Building (HSEB); University of Arizona & Northern Arizona University; Phoenix
Award of Excellence
CO Architects with Ayers Saint Gross
The striated copper cladding helps protect against a harsh desert climate. The design meets the two universities’ desire for identity, sustainability and effective new learning environments. Many student-focused spaces encourage interaction between students and lecturers. The instructional elements of the project are organized in east-west blocks to minimize the building’s exposure to the intense Arizona sun. These blocks are located close together, creating a narrow “canyon”: a shaded space for outdoor gatherings and providing access to lecture halls.
University Center, The New School; New York City
Award of Excellence
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP with SLCE Architects
With its 230,000-sf, seven-story campus center and 130,000-sf residential tower, the University Center reorganizes the elements of a traditional campus, from quads to classrooms and living quarters. Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal campus pathways ease movement through the building while increasing interaction among students and faculty. Academic spaces can be renovated or reconfigured with minimal impact on power, data, or lighting to meet changing needs.
Vashon Island High School; Vashon Island, Washington
Award of Excellence
Integrus Architecture
Located on a small island in Puget Sound, the design team sought to impart a quality of porosity to the new building. The concept of porosity defines how the building supports spatial connections and how students move in and out of the building. Shared areas are located adjacent to more formal teaching spaces, while a learning commons extends the library. A small group presentation room is located within the commons and a central courtyard provides sheltered outdoor learning areas.
Carl Sandburg Elementary School; Kirkland, Washington
Award of Merit
NAC|Architecture
Preserving the park-like feel of the northwest corner of Carl Sandburg Elementary School was central to the planning of the replacement school. The majority of the classroom neighborhoods are focused on a grove of 70-year-old Big Leaf maples, creating multiple outdoor learning spaces. The school has a capacity of 600 students in neighborhoods of either three or four classrooms. Each neighborhood is organized around an open learning area, small group rooms, and teacher planning areas.
Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons, Georgia Institute of Technology; Atlanta
Award of Merit
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
The Clough Commons is at the center of Georgia Tech’s campus. The three dimensional grid of circulation and daylight frames large sections of furnished common spaces for student study, interaction and experiential learning. The building anchors campus circulation and frames Tech Green, the school’s central outdoor space. Clough Commons's landscaped roof garden is one of Tech’s most popular destination amenities.
Reed College Performing Arts Building; Portland, Oregon
Award of Merit
Opsis Architecture LLP
Reed College’s Performing Arts Building creates a 78,000-sf, cross-disciplinary home for the arts, like theatre, dance, and music programs. The building functions as the public front door to the campus. All performance and teaching spaces open to the three-level, light-filled, arts atrium merging informal and formal learning.
e3 Civic High School; San Diego
Walter Taylor Award
LPA, Inc.
The central circulation provides students with more than just a path of travel as the central steps and gallery space connecting the two floors. Every gathering space has a pull out or quiet area and every learning cluster or village has a small team room and a larger social space, all to support learning skills like critical thinking, collaboration, and communication.
Nueva School at Bay Meadows; San Mateo, California
Shirley Cooper Award
Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects
The Nueva School's new campus provides innovative educational spaces that supports cross disciplinary engagement and project-based inquiry. It fosters a strong community, models healthy, low-carbon living and learning, and adaptively reuses space at a former horse racing venue.
Related Stories
| Oct 13, 2010
Residences bring students, faculty together in the Middle East
A new residence complex is in design for United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, UAE, near Abu Dhabi. Plans for the 120-acre mixed-use development include 710 clustered townhomes and apartments for students and faculty and common areas for community activities.
| Oct 13, 2010
New health center to focus on education and awareness
Construction is getting pumped up at the new Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at the University of Colorado, Denver. The four-story, 94,000-sf building will focus on healthy lifestyles and disease prevention.
| Oct 13, 2010
Community college plans new campus building
Construction is moving along on Hudson County Community College’s North Hudson Campus Center in Union City, N.J. The seven-story, 92,000-sf building will be the first higher education facility in the city.
| Oct 12, 2010
University of Toledo, Memorial Field House
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Memorial Field House, once the lovely Collegiate Gothic (ca. 1933) centerpiece (along with neighboring University Hall) of the University of Toledo campus, took its share of abuse after a new athletic arena made it redundant, in 1976. The ultimate insult occurred when the ROTC used it as a paintball venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Owen Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Officials at Michigan State University’s East Lansing Campus were concerned that Owen Hall, a mid-20th-century residence facility, was no longer attracting much interest from its target audience, graduate and international students.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cell and Genome Sciences Building, Farmington, Conn.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Administrators at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington didn’t think much of the 1970s building they planned to turn into the school’s Cell and Genome Sciences Building. It’s not that the former toxicology research facility was in such terrible shape, but the 117,800-sf structure had almost no windows and its interior was dark and chopped up.
| Oct 12, 2010
Full Steam Ahead for Sustainable Power Plant
An innovative restoration turns a historic but inoperable coal-burning steam plant into a modern, energy-efficient marvel at Duke University.
| Sep 16, 2010
Green recreation/wellness center targets physical, environmental health
The 151,000-sf recreation and wellness center at California State University’s Sacramento campus, called the WELL (for “wellness, education, leisure, lifestyle”), has a fitness center, café, indoor track, gymnasium, racquetball courts, educational and counseling space, the largest rock climbing wall in the CSU system.
| Sep 13, 2010
Community college police, parking structure targets LEED Platinum
The San Diego Community College District's $1.555 billion construction program continues with groundbreaking for a 6,000-sf police substation and an 828-space, four-story parking structure at San Diego Miramar College.
| Sep 13, 2010
Campus housing fosters community connection
A 600,000-sf complex on the University of Washington's Seattle campus will include four residence halls for 1,650 students and a 100-seat cafe, 8,000-sf grocery store, and conference center with 200-seat auditorium for both student and community use.
