Architect Calls Santa Clara University Project a Landmark

The 7,500-sq-.ft. residential quad will break ground this month. The building is intended to educate users and visitors on the importance of sustainable design.

Call it an experiment in building green.

Santa Clara University's plan to erect a campus facility turned into a plan for a "sustainable demonstration" building that provides a living lab to educate its students, faculty, administration and facility managers on a variety of design strategies and building-site systems.

The Kennedy Commons facility is now being looked upon by campus officials as a "goal-oriented proposal" to demonstrate and test sustainable design, products, techniques and equipment likely to be used in other campus building projects. It also is intended to educate users and visitors on sustainable design through obvious design, displayed design and monitoring and measurement devices.

Construction of the 7,500-sq.-ft. Kennedy Commons will start this month and will be completed in December. San Francisco-based Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz is the design architect, with Devcon Construction of Milpitas as the design/build general contractor. San Francisco-based Forell Elsessor is the structural engineer and Timmons Design Engineers of San Francisco is the mechanical/electric/plumbing subcontractor.

Kennedy Commons will support the 800 students housed in the residential quad, and provides a residential den, multi-purpose room, offices and two classrooms.

"The project team has taken a modified design/build (bridging) approach to creating and constructing this project in a nine-month total schedule," said Liz Chaney, director of academic facilities for the project's architect, San Francisco-based Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz. "We also facilitated a brainstorming session with the students, faculty, administration, design team and experts to quickly define the design priorities and design solutions."

Situated in the current concrete Kennedy Mall area on campus, the facility will also have an open area for outdoor programming and social events to support the adjacent student residence halls.

"The new building will be the neighborhood center for the students-a place where they can get together to watch a movie, study for finals, or eat pizza," said Joe Sugg, SCU's vice president for operations.

Chaney said Kennedy Commons will represent one of the first entirely green academic buildings in the U.S. "It will represent a landmark design in terms of academic institutions becoming more up to date with sustainable architecture," she added.

The university is not looking for any specific LEED-accreditation level, but wants to demonstrate certain aspects of green design and building procedures and materials for educational purposes, Sugg said.

Sean Huang, KMD's design principal, said the design of Kennedy Commons works in harmony with the mission style of architecture that is central to SCU's thematic campus design.

"Part of the challenge was to rediscover and revive the inherent vision of the mission style of architecture, as it was first used for warmer climates, and integrating sustainable elements from the past with new technologies to create [an icon] design that provides a sense of excitement, flexibility, transparency and modernity," Huang added.

The building uses a multitude of green materials to create "a highly functional and flexible environment," Huang said. The latest energy-efficient technology such as straw bale walls, raised flooring and natural ventilation will be incorporated into the construction of the structure.