Modern Student Housing

Gensler designs Biola's new dormitory with a young, fresh look

By Greg Aragon

When Biola University's student residents return from summer vacation next month, 409 of them will a have a unique new dormitory to call home.

"The architecture of the building is significantly different from the other residence halls that we have on campus," said Ken Bascom, senior director, facilities, planning and construction for Biola. "We tried to make it a little more fresh and young and non-institutional in its design."

Designed by San Francisco-based Gensler Architects, the $15 million Horton Residence Hall will add 203 rooms and 409 beds to the college, located in La Mirada in southern Los Angeles County. It replaces the old Horton Hall, which was built in 1959 and offered only 110 beds.

Bascom said the old building, which was torn down last spring to make room for new the facility, was too small, offered no air-conditioning and "was built to the expectations of the 1950s."

Biola University is a private Christian college, founded in 1908.

"The new project was undertaken because we have a very strong demand for on-campus student housing," he said. "We started last fall with 360 two-student rooms that had three students living in each of them. We needed this project."

He said that when the facility is complete at the end of this month, the school will have a total of 10 residential buildings on campus, providing housing for about 2,250 students out of the school's total enrollment of 5,600.

Covering 89,000 sq. ft., the five-story, U-shaped Horton Hall is located on the eastern edge of Biola's 95-acre campus. It is being constructed by Los Alamitos-based Millie and Severson.

Project highlights include a center courtyard, with benches, a fountain and trees; a 10-ft.-high, 50-ft.-long concrete catwalk, stretching across the main lobby, connecting the north and south wings at the second floor; and a varied exterior, showcasing exposed concrete shear walls against a backdrop of brick and plaster.

But the project's most noticeable feature may be the random pattern of 271 windows scattered about the exterior.

"[This design] actually serves two purposes," said Scott Kaufman, Gensler's principal architect. "Inside, it offered a variety of room types for the students; by placing [the windows] in different places, it offers multiple room configurations [and] from the exterior, it helped give the building (the tallest on campus) a more of a horizontal feel."

Bascom added that with Biola's other residence halls, the rooms are vertically stacked and the windows are vertically aligned, yielding an institutional look. "On the first five-story building on campus, we didn't want to emphasize the verticality, so even though the rooms are stacked, which makes a big difference in the economy of construction, the windows have been arranged in such a way that they look like a random pattern and so the outside look of the building is more freeform than rigid and institutional."

As far as constructing the building, the only challenge arose from the project's proximity to a seasonal stream bed, said Rod Mcisaac, project manager with Millie and Severson.

"This meant we encountered some pretty wet and challenging soil conditions at the start of the job, during excavation," said Mcisaac. To dry the dirt, he said crews had to dig out 8,500 cu.-yds. of wet dirt and spread it across an adjacent, 75,000-sq.-ft parking lot, creating a massive 10-ft.-high pile of dirt.

He said it took about two weeks for the soil to dry and added about a month to the project schedule.

"The alternative plan would have been to export the soil to some other location -- assuming you can find a home for it -- and then bring in clean, dry soil, which would have been far more expensive," said Mcisaac.

The Project Team
Owner: Biola University
General Contractor: Millie and Severson
Architect: Gensler