Page 19 - College Planning & Management, June 2018

RENDERINGS COURTESY OF PERKINS+WILL
RECYCLED FACILITIES
floors on the building’s exterior, mainly for a deck; preserving dis- tinctive roof trusses; crafting exist- ing steel plates into parts for lighting fixtures; and showcasing an old crane with a hook by moving it to the entryway—an image of the hook is now part of the Coal Ben logo.
“The best part about this project,” Yurko adds, “is that we were able to take a very utilitarian original-use structure located at the heart of campus and re- purpose it into a vibrant hospital- ity venue that serves a multitude of uses from dining, gathering, studying, and special events, all while celebrating its uniqueness and industrial heritage.”
FROM SHOPPING AND SHIPPING TO TEACHING AND LEARNING
Elsewhere, another adaptive reuse project, this one by Austin Community College (ACC) in Tex- as, speaks to the tenor of changing times: in this instance, the decline of shopping malls. Alison Binford, project manager in the Austin office of architect Perkins+Will, explains: “Retail malls are dying, and finding a way to re-use the massive amounts of land and building area being abandoned is important.”
The college responded with a two-phase, $152.8-million project that redeveloped an old shopping center, Highland Mall in central
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MATTHEW CARBONE
Austin, into a 415,000-square-foot college campus. Phase two adds various career-tech facilities.
ACC’s range of offerings “meant that almost everything is a specialty space,” Binford explains. “There are very few ‘typical’ classrooms, meaning each individual space required specialized planning and detailing to address the specific needs, such as acoustics and equip- ment infrastructure.” Binford describes the resulting spaces as fostering “crossover and serendipi- tous interactions between students, faculty, and visiting guests who might not typically interact in a more traditional environment.”
Finally, a mixed-use develop- ment is planned around the campus, giving the new ACC an additional role, which Binford calls “the anchor of a neighborhood and a catalyst for urban renewal of the area.”
A very different reuse scenario played out at Bard College in New York State: Campus officials, eye- ing a project to construct a Media Lab, approached architect Maziar Behrooz and his team at MB Archi- tecture. Bard officials were clearly looking for something out-of-the- box and knew about the firm’s work with an unconventional material: boxes... logistics slang for shipping containers.
The process required, among other things, extensive planning and finishing of “lights, plumb-
ing, windows, and a $45,000 glass garage door,” Behrooz explains. Then came delivery. “It was hard to know if everything would arrive intact, after barreling down the highway at 65 mph,” but every- thing was fine.
According to MB Architec- ture, the project’s four containers “were installed in half a day in the middle of campus...completely finished and fully operational in a couple of weeks. The double-wide, double-tall arrangement yields
a 15-foot wide, 17-foot tall main space, and a second-floor office.”
It’s the architect’s first container application on a campus, and he sees it as a very promising method “where a quick, non-disruptive solu- tion is required.” He adds, “The po- tential is clear, and we have shared designs for multi-unit classrooms and dorms with other institutions and are awaiting feedback.”
These projects are enabling campuses to make bold, new, and strategic use out of buildings and materials while providing ancillary community and environmental benefits. Finally, such projects, by embracing what came before, can forge a path forward while exempli- fying an institution’s imaginative spiritformanyyearstocome. CPM
Scott Berman is a freelance writer with experience in educa- tional topics.
AUSTIN COMMUNITY COLLEGE CAMPUS
BARD COLLEGE MEDIA LAB
JUNE 2018 / COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT 19