AIA Educational Facility Awards • Dallas, Seattle, Atlanta, Santa Fe...

The LEED Platinum-certified Portland Community College Newberg Center, in Newberg, Oregon, was designed by Eddy Architects, Inc.

Four buildings received top marks in this year's Educational Facility Design Awards from the AIA Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE), while 11 other projects were also recognized in the program's two lesser tiers.

The fifteen projects, all of which are located in the United States, range from a LEED Platinum-certified community college building, in Newberg, Oregon, to a mix of primary and secondary school projects in Bellevue, Washington; Snohomish, Washington; and Joplin, Missouri; and also include several special schools focused on either the arts and sciences.

And in the case of one project, a Beaux Arts-style swimming pool was converted into a 282-seat music performance space.

The Ardmore Elementary School, in Bellevue, Washington was designed by NAC|Architecture.

The two-story Ardmore Elementary School is organized around multiple internal courtyards and relies heavily on glazing to connect parts of the building with each other and with the surrounding landscape. A notion of non-linear learning is embodied in the variety of meandering paths available throughout the building, gradually revealing different spaces, those close and those far away.

It is both a design tool used to amplify the interior experiential quality, as well as an "educational transparency," designed to foster easy collaboration and an overall sense of community.

William Rawn Associates designed the new Studzinski Recital Hall on the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

The Studzinski Recital Hall is a 282-seat recital hall at the center of the Bowdoin College campus. The building has been designed to accommodate a range of musical programs, including classical, jazz, world, and electronic music, at a scale supportive of student performers. The project, which opened in May of 2007, involved the radical conversion of a historic McKim, Mead, and White swimming pool into a recital hall. Abundant natural light and warm wood interiors create an intimacy supportive of student performers, while state-of-the-art A/V and acoustical technology supports innovative productions and rehearsals.

A second winning project by William Rawn Associates is the Milton Academy Pritzker Science Center, in Milton, Massachusetts.

The Milton Academy Pritzker Science Center, seeks to make science education central and visible at this private school, completing the south edge of the cherished campus green. Major entrances to the north and east integrate with the campus's established circulation patterns. And extensive interior and exterior glazing reveals not just public spaces, but the classrooms themselves. This transparency is said to foster interaction, collaboration, and inquiry.

Extensive signage and a building dashboard also highlight sustainable features and serve as teaching tools.

Trilogy Architecture Urban Design Research designed the Redding School of the Arts, in Redding, California.

Despite the marginal climate, half of the learning spaces in the Redding School of the Arts were located outdoors to increase the visual and physical connection to the outside. This was made possible by the implementation of semi-conditioned spaces with summer cooling through evaporative cooling fabric ductwork and winter radiant heating timed to occupant use.

These features greatly reduce operating costs. The building and site are used as a tool for teaching sustainable design features for example: transparency into interior building workings, exposed interior structure, dashboards showing real time energy use, and interpretive signage for building elements.


The 2012 CAE Educational Facility Design Awards jury included: jury chair Paul C. Hutton, AIA, of Hutton Architecture Studio; David Ade, AIA of SMP Architects, Bukky Akinsanmi, AIA, of Cooper Carry Architecture; Trung Le, AIA of Cannon Design; and Robert Moje, AIA, of VMDO.

Citation Winners

---

The LEED Gold-certified Betty and Norman Levan Hall, in Santa Fe, New Mexico was designed by Lake|Flato Architects. The Betty and Norman Levan Hall at St. John's College, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is home to the school's Graduate Institute. Occupying a prominent site in the campus core, the building houses the College's two graduate programs as well as classrooms, faculty offices, a multi-purpose meeting room and a student commons. Designed as a model of environmental responsibility, this project incorporates principles of stewardship and conservation of the adjacent natural landscape. The building is designed with outdoor meeting and study spaces immersed in the landscape of the site.

---

SHW Group designed the Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Collegiate Academy, located in Dallas, Texas. The design of the Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Collegiate Academy campus responds to the desire for varied social and learning experiences by providing large and small group instruction spaces and flexible collaboration spaces. Environmental education and display panels in the common areas educate the occupants and visitors about sustainable features in the building. Buildings placed on site were selected to minimize required earth work, while maximizing the benefits of natural light to program elements. Improved noise control features were implemented between classrooms. Regional and organic compound materials were used in the construction of the campus.

---

Mahlum designed the MHCC Early Childcare Center, in Gresham, Oregon. Conceived as a village of small play-learn communities, this daycare facility for for Mount Hood Community College features natural and man-made environments that create an engaging network. The building uses patterns of daylight, weather, and annual seasons for inspiration, inviting poetic reflection, joyful play, and relaxation during the course of a day. Deep walls provide niches, seats and other spaces for children to claim for themselves, as well as abundant and accessible storage. The center provides opportunities for exploration, creativity, free thinking and interaction and presents invitations to "get dirty" by playing in the sandbox with a water hand pump, or with floating ducks in the wet play area. This project, which was covered in ArchitectureWeek No. 555, also received a 2011 award from AIA Portland.

---

The Portland Community College Newberg Center,  in Newberg, Oregon, was designed by Hennebery  Eddy Architects, Inc. The LEED Platinum-certified Portland Community College Newberg Center, which recevied one of the 2012 COTE Top Ten Awards serves as a living laboratory to study energy use, strategies for its reduction, and is setting a new paradigm for sustainable design at Oregon's largest institution of higher learning. The building is organized around a central circulation spine. Classrooms and administrative spaces flank the north side while, multi-purpose rooms to the south shift and rotate in plan, creating a dynamic central commons. The building's large, south-facing roof reaches beyond the building's shell to create a sheltered entry plaza – the front door to the campus.

---

Riverview Elementary School, in Snohomish, Washington was designed by designed by NAC|Architecture, which also designed the Ardmore Elementary School. The wetland which claims a large portion of the Riverview Elementary School's site provided an opportunity to intertwine site and building design, with the intention of allowing meaningful learning to happen inside and outside. Landscape and building textures work together to reflect the natural environment. And sustainable strategies were integrated in the overall project approach, and providing many opportunities for students to learn about sustainability through fun and play. Integration of the site, building and landscape design creates innovative educational opportunities that speak to stewardship of the land and instill life-long influences on our future citizens.

Merit Winners

---

The Bertschi School Living Science Building, in Seattle, Washington, by KMD Architects. The Bertschi School Living Science Building, a science wing for an existing elementary school, was built to Living Building Challenge v2.0 standards. Designed collaboratively with the students, it follows the requirements of 20 Imperatives including net zero water, net zero energy and adherence to a materials Red List which all must be proven over a one year period of occupancy. All water needed for the building is collected and treated on site and a rain garden produces food. All sustainable features are visible for students to help them learn ecological concepts that can become intrinsic values for future generations.

---

Early Learning Center, in Des Plaines, Illinois,  by Wight & Company. The Early Learning Center (ELC) is a 51,000-square-foot (4,700-square-meter)building attached to an existing elementary school. Sparking lifelong learning starts with the idea that architecture and the natural surroundings are teaching tools. To start kids down that path, the ELC emphasized design elements below 4', and created inside and outside learning experiences. Reading nooks with eye level windows look out to rain gardens, courtyards offer hands-on science projects, and selectively placed themed breakout areas provide spaces for unstructured learning.

---

Hinman Research Building, in Atlanta, Georgia, by Lord, Aeck & Sargent in collaboration w/ Office dA. The Hinman Research Building's adaptive-reuse transforms a piece of Georgia Tech's Modernist built heritage into a new annex for the College of Architecture. The original 50-foot (15-meter) tall highbay shed has been re-programmed in the vertical axis and left flexible in plan, now featuring a studio mezzanine hung by slender rods from a re-purposed bridge crane. The building also features a 32-foot-wide (9.8-meter-wide) vertical-lift wall/screen; a spiral stair wrapped in guardrail mesh; and an array of retractable lights. A general aesthetic of suspended filigree emerges from these elements, producing a middle ground for the space.

---

Joplin Interim High School, in Joplin, Missouri, by CGA Architects and DLR Group. One of the deadliest and most destructive tornadoes in the history of the U.S. ripped through Joplin on May 22, 2011 destroying Joplin High School. Two days later, Superintendent Dr. C.J. Huff emphatically stated school would open as scheduled on August 17th. An abandoned big-box retail space was selected for an adaptive reuse to house 1,200 students. The design of the new Joplin Interim High School integrates every square inch of the existing space, and features 21st-century learning environments utilizing flexibility and interconnectivity. Large openings, oversized pivot doors, and a diverse array of furniture allow students to customize spaces for collaborative learning.

---

Morse & Ezra Stiles Colleges at Yale, in New  Haven, Connecticut, by KieranTimberlake Designed by Eero Saarinen, the Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges are part of Yale's system of residential colleges. The building is located on an irregular site at the western edge of the campus. It has an organic geometry, with the two colleges bifurcated by an elevated walk. A recent renovation focused on the transformation of the student housing mix from single rooms into suites, the provision of 25,000 square feet (2,300 square meters) of student activity space below grade, and the transformation of outdoor hardscapes into a sustainable landscape. The addition is conceived as being unified with the landscape, extending it through the architecture, fusing inside and outside, new and old, and above and below.

---

The unbuilt US Air Force Academy Center for Character and Leadership Development (CCLD), in Colorado Springs, Colorado, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP Revisiting the campus it originally designed in 1954, SOM has designed a new academic building for the US Air Force Academy's main cadet area. The most prominent feature of the design, the 105-foot-high sky light, precisely aligns cadets inside the Honor Conference Room with the North Star, Polaris, and symbolically serves as an instrument of cadet navigation. The sky light also provides ample natural light to the forum, a central gathering space for the academic program. Classrooms, meeting rooms, and offices ring two adjacent courtyards, maximizing exterior views and minimizing the use of artificial lighting. The building anticipates LEED Platinum certification.