Project Description
Kallmann McKinnell & Wood was commissioned to design a new 210,000 square foot complex of academic buildings for Education and Social Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara that will house the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education (GGSE) and a variety of departments of the College of Letters and Science (L+S), including Law and Society, Communication, Sociology, Information Technology, and Film Studies. The new academic buildings (ESSB) will provide state-of-the-art teaching and research space, focusing on interdisciplinary education. They are planned to provide flexible space able to adapt to the evolving changes in program demands for administrative, academic, teaching and research methodologies.
The selected building site is located on the main UCSB campus in a precinct known as the West Side Area. The buildings are distributed on the site in response to campus master plan guidelines and incorporate campus infrastructure features including routes for pedestrians, bicycle circulation, and life safety and service vehicle access. The project reinforces the campus planning guidelines in providing a north-south Access/View Corridor that essentially bisects the site, allowing the greater campus community access through the site, linking the main campus to the athletic field precinct to the north with views beyond of the Santa Ynez Mountains.
The exploration and analysis throughout the design phases of the many complex design issues associated with this project - including campus master planning, site and landscape requirements, utilities and technical criteria, building orientation for natural ventilation and daylight, sustainable design features to meet a LEED’s Silver rating - are determining factors in the architectural approach and site planning strategies. Building massing was studied both in terms of its urban design impact and its potential internal planning and spatial qualities.
As the site is perceived as having all sides with varying degrees of frontality and public presence, entry to the complex of buildings for GGSE and L+S is from multiple sides including the provision of paseos at various locations on the ground floor. These arcaded outdoor spaces allow passages through the buildings to a variety of courtyard spaces on the site. Both the L+S and GGSE buildings are organized around exterior open space courtyards with the public teaching classroom, laboratory, clinic, and film theater spaces located along open exterior arcades at the ground floor. The upper three floors are composed mostly of offices and support spaces, for faculty, research, and school administrators.
The Center for Film, Television & New Media is a separate building: a 14,000 square foot, 2-story volume located at the northeast corner of the site, which establishes a focal point and iconic link between the academic facilities to be housed in the adjacent ESSB buildings, and a broader vision of cultural amenity for the campus and public community. The facility features a 298-seat Film Theater equipped for film screening, public lectures and panel discussions. Support spaces include a public lobby with a small café/bar for receptions and a green room. In addition, a production stage black-box space supports the instructional program.
