The Southwestern College’s Instructional Complex 1 addresses the demand for highly effective general-use instructional space with a range of teaching and learning spaces for the School of Arts, Communication and Social Sciences; School of Business Technology; and School of Language, Literature and Humanities. These schools, and their respective students and staff, have access to lecture classrooms, active classrooms for hands-on learning, spaces for peer-to-peer collaboration and project work and even a planetarium. The project incorporates 10 two-story concrete tilt-up buildings divided into four groups based on their configuration and structural irregularities; this lends the campus a unique look, as the groups are not orthogonal to each other. The buildings are connected from the second level by walkways, and these, as well as the buildings, are kept structurally sound by strategically placed seismic joints. The highlight of the project is the planetarium; a series of vertical steel trusses snake around and enclose a building of concrete tilt-up walls; inside, a dome hangs suspended from the roof and seismically tied to the walls.
Location
Chula Vista, CA
Year
2024
Client
Gensler
Cost
$70 Million
Scale
111,867 SF
