NAC|Architecture - On the Boards: Architects, Seattle, Spokane, Los Angeles, Coeur d'Alene, Denver

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On the Boards:

Campus Classroom Building, Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane, Washington: The new 54,000-square-foot Campus Classroom Building, which will earn LEED Silver certification at minimum, occupies a prominent site at SFCC. The building is designed as two perpendicular, contrasting wings to complement and enhance important features of the campus. A more dominant, transparent classroom wing of glass, concrete and metal panel visually connects the building’s interior teaching and learning environments with the rest of the campus by its location adjacent to the major pedestrian walk linking the campus together. A contrasting, more academic, primarily brick wing houses the campus administration, a tutoring center, service learning center and community engagement offices. The east façade of this more traditional brick architecture defines one side of a new campus quad that terminates at the existing library.

Gratts Primary Center and Early Education Center, Los Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles, California: 2008 Award of Honor - Project-in-Design, Coalition for Adequate School Housing; The Gratts Primary Center and Early Education Center is a joint-use project partnering with A Community of Friends, who provides low-income housing immediately adjacent to the school. It will be located near downtown Los Angeles, north of 5th Street between Lucas and Hartford. The project is intended as an expansion of the existing Gratts Elementary School immediately to the north. Programmed at 32,761 square feet with 1.4 acres of play area, the Primary Center provides facilities for 380 students. The Early Education Center will be a state-licensed daycare facility, designed to serve 176 pre-school and early-school-age children. The Early Education Center is programmed at 12,620 square feet and provides 13,000 square feet of outdoor play area for students. With a 40-degree slope from north to south on the 2.31-acre site, the project makes innovative use of multiple levels to create varied play spaces, including a protected play area on the roof of the parking structure for the kindergarten students. Play space is also provided atop the lunch shelter to increase the amount of area available. After-school access to the site by the local Boys & Girls Club is provided at the shared property line. This project was designed based on principles of California High Performance Schools with sustainable principles such as orientation, natural lighting, sustainable materials, and energy-efficient systems.

Snohomish High School Modernization, Snohomish School District, Snohomish, Washington; Snohomish School District - Snohomish, Washington The project pursues the transformation of the school, through the definition and emphasis of “negative space” and the incorporation of “texture”, to reveal coherence and readability out of the disorder of the existing campus. The challenge was that of an existing campus comprising 17 individual buildings constructed over 16 different building campaigns. The campus was first established in the 1930’s and is the “heart and soul” of the community. The goal of the project was to create a comprehensive master plan providing coherence and the desired educational relationships for critical functions, while maintaining respect for the historical context and community “memory” of the school. The use of brick became a clear mandate as a historical link, a memory. The approach was in two parts. First, organize the new and existing buildings around coherent exterior space, and secondly, provide identity, memory, and assist way-finding by utilizing brick architectural markers at circulation and gathering points. Negative space, connectors, and “texture” markers were abstracted and overlayed on the site plan. New buildings, on the west, were designed to work with the existing buildings, on the east, to create well defined exterior space. The result is a re-configuration of buildings into a coherent and functional whole, using the existing qualities of the campus and creating a purposeful learning environment.

Kootenai Medical Center Women's & Children's Center, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; As a continuation of the master planning process started in 2001, NAC|Architecture is designing Kootenai Medical Center’s new Women’s & Children’s Center. This addition will significantly expand the obstetric and pediatric services in a three-story, 70,000-square-foot structure, connected to the main hospital via an underground service tunnel and second-floor sky bridge. The Women’s & Children’s Center will be located on the second and third floors, with an entry lobby on the first floor. The remainder of the first floor is shelled space and will serve as future patient rooms for KMC’s dialysis and oncology units.”+Chr(13)+Chr(13)+”The Women’s & Children’s Center includes 10 LDR rooms, 16 postpartum patient rooms, nine pediatric patient rooms, two C-Section ORs, an 11-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and three boarding rooms so mothers and families can remain near baby during NICU stays. The patient- and family-focused design keeps the family involved in the birthing experience and care. Elements include multiple waiting areas close to patient rooms, family-accessible nourishment rooms, large patient rooms to accommodate extended families, in-room sleeper bench with trundle bed for multiple family member night stays, bathing sinks in each LDR for families to experience baby’s first bath, and hotel amenities such as wireless Internet, flat-screen cable television, DVD players, video-game consoles and refrigerators.

Eastgate Elementary School, Bellevue School District, Bellevue, Washington; The Eastgate Elementary School replacement explores conceptual and physical approaches to organizing space, positing an answer to the questions: What constitutes a school’s unique experience? How is the building typology formalized? The project identifies and examines the aspects of daily school life that can provide a basis for reinterpretation of the early learning environment. The goal is to integrate architectural and site design to foster a variety of learning experiences. The reinterpretation of schools as a type occurs by exploring students’ changing psychology and experiences and their relationship to a school’s architectural spaces with the intent of stimulating learning in all its forms. Defining school as ”a place to grow and learn, a place to connect with self, nature, and community,” this project posits an architecture that instructs. It is architecture of alternating solid and void, abstraction and logic, and stimulation and experience. Circulating through the school, one experiences the constantly shifting relationship of outside and inside, of prospect and refuge. The courtyards provide exterior instruction convenient to all learning areas. The building volumes open to the exterior, allowing daylighting throughout the school. Exterior finish textures comprise a system of scale, eliciting responses at different distances to approach, engage or touch.

Grant County Skills Center, Moses Lake, Washington; The new Grant County Skills Center, located in Moses Lake, will annually benefit approximately 300 high school students from 11 regional school districts by preparing them with skills and certifications for highly desirable family-wage jobs in the local economy. The 43,000-square-foot Phase 1 facility on 8.25 acres will house state-of-the-art laboratories, classrooms, technology, and extensive equipment in support of programs in Culinary Arts, Pre-Engineering, Design and Construction, Manufacturing and Welding Technology, Pre-Nursing, and Dental Assisting. NAC|Architecture assisted in evaluation of potential sites, development of the comprehensive project budget, determination of required facilities to support the various skills departments, and assessment of how this somewhat non-traditional educational facility may implement high-performance strategies in pursuit of Washington Sustainable Schools Protocol (WSSP) achievement. The Phase 1 design sensitively considers how the future approximately 20,000-square-foot Phase 2 will be added, including provision for expanded indoor shop and outdoor work areas to support the planned Automotive Technologies addition and other as yet undefined skills spaces.

Patterson Hall Renovation, Eastern Washington University, Cheney, Washington; NAC|Architecture recently completed schematic design for the comprehensive renovation of Patterson Hall, the largest general classroom building on the campus of Eastern Washington University. When complete, Patterson Hall will house 44 classrooms, 165 faculty offices, two computer labs and a forensics lab. The project is designed to attain minimum LEED Silver certification. NAC|Architecture previously completed the pre-design study for the project, which included developing the program, site and cost analyses, master plan and policy coordination, technology demands, facility operations and maintenance requirements, and phased-construction considerations.

Deer Park High School, Deer Park School District, Deer Park, Washington; While still in design phase, Deer Park High School’s design has evolved with input received through a series of meetings with the Design Advisory Committee, which includes representatives from administration, teachers, staff and facilities staff. The new plan results in a total of 146,236 square feet of renovated and added area. Site design includes expanded parking for all users and a bus loop that surrounds the school. The bus loop also provides access for emergency and delivery vehicles. Pedestrian paths link the parking to two significant entry plazas. The most prominent entry plaza fronts the commons and serves not only as the main entry to the school but also as part of a secondary entry between the library and the administration area. A second entry plaza is located to the north between the new performing arts wing and the auxiliary gym. This plaza will be developed as the primary events entry.

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