The new student center at Monterrey Tech University in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, is unlike most others at universities across the globe. Designed by architects Rubén Escobar- Urrutia, LEED AP, and Ricardo Pacheco with Ciudad Juárez-based Grupo ARKHOS, the twolevel, 7,000-square-foot building is made up of 11 40-foot recycled shipping containers from Iron Square Foot Inc., El Paso, Texas.
Escobar-Urrutia, a Monterrey Tech alumni, says that Grupo ARKHOS has been working with the university on all of its projects since 1999, and had even used containers on a previous building for extracurricular classes.
Design Factors
Surrounded by a mature treed garden, the student center is composed of a covered access plaza that integrates itself into the building’s interior by a set of glass and aluminum garage doors from Mason, Ohio-based Clopay Garage Doors, blurring the lines between the interior and exterior.
Standard High Cube Intermodal Steel Building Units (ISBU) are stacked one over the other to generate voids and cantilevered areas, creating informal gathering spaces on both levels, and interesting views from one level to the other. The resulting central space works as a double-height patio, surrounded by mezzanines and porticos.
“The containers’ structural integrity allowed us to place them in a more playful way, not aligning all of the corners of the containers one on top of the other,” explains Escobar-Urrutia. “The several voids we had with this placement of the containers gave us movement, variety, interesting geometry, some cantilevered elements, and natural ventilation and illumination on all sides of the building, allowing the garage doors to be open during operating hours and economizing on the use of utilities for most of the year.”
To frame the cover of the entry plaza, the architects used 1,100 square feet of 4-mm Reynobond aluminum composite panels in Silver Duraglass 500 from Alcoa Architectural Products. Additionally, Celoscreen 200 louvers from Hunter Douglas Contract, Norcross, Ga., shade the entry plaza and some of the south and west windows, giving the plaza an enclosed look while still protecting it from the sun.
Conceived as a leisure and recreation place for the student community, the building needed to be flexible and have a character that appealed to the students, Escobar explains. The lower level has a central area with seating and space for playing air hockey, ping-pong, board and video games, watching TV, in addition to a small food kiosk, school supply store and restrooms. The second floor has a variety of seating options, and a smoothie and soft drinks bar.
Sustainable Elements
In addition to being a place for students to hang out, the center “also needed to be a sustainable and energy-efficient building that would show the commitment of the institution towards sustainability in a different way, while teaching students that recycling, natural ventilation and sun harvesting is possible on a low-cost project,” explains Escobar-Urrutia. The use of the aluminum and glass garage doors allow natural cross ventilation throughout the year. Because mature trees surround the building, the winds come in at a lower speed and a lower temperature, meaning the building can operate with the windows open and HVAC systems shut off for most of the year.
The container’s exterior is covered with a mix of automotive paint and ceramic nanospheres that generate a texture resistant to abrasion. It also repels the sun’s heat, keeping the building cool. Inside the containers, foam insulation from ICYNENE, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, was covered by drywall to give the center the needed insulation.
Recycling the containers reduces the CO2 generated by the building construction, while also preventing the unnecessary production of tons of structural steel. Escobar-Urrutia says that 80 percent of the buildings structure was swapped by the containers. Additionally, using the containers as the structure, walls, flooring and roofing reduces the overall cost of the project by about 20 percent, as well as shortening the construction time by a month and a half, he adds.
Using the containers also helped the school meet its budget, while showing that sustainability and recycling could be done without high-tech equipment, with a relative low investment and with a very good level of insulation, explains Escobar-Urrutia. Built in only three months, the project was designed to LEED-NC v3 standards.
“The high school students love the new building,” Escobar-Urrutia says. “It has been a very inspiring process and they really feel that it is their own. It is always busy, freeing up other areas of the campus, which we wanted to be free to adapt for college or higher education students.
“The campus faculty has also started to use the building for other activities that were not considered on the initial design goals, like having dinner events with parents or the faculty. Since it is mostly an open area building, it can accommodate other activities with little rearrangement of furniture.”
Student Center, Monterrey Technical University, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico
Completed: August 2011
Total square footage: 7,000 square feet
Architect: Grupo ARKHOS, Ciudad Juárez, www.grupoarkhos.com
Metal wall panel supplier: Metales Internacionales, Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico
Metal wall panel installer: VV Ingenieria en Cristal S.A. de C.V., Ciudad Juárez
Garage door installer: Sistemas Inteligentes de Acceso, Ciudad Juárez
Louver supplier/installer: DINTEL Arquitectura y Construccion, Chihuahua, Chihuahua
Structural steel installer: Estructuras Dolmen S.A. de C.V., Ciudad Juárez
Containers: Iron Square Foot Inc., El Paso, Texas, www.ironft2.com
Curtainwall: Aluminio y Tecnologia de Chihuahua, Ciudad Juárez, www.altech.mx
Garage doors: Clopay Garage Doors, Mason, Ohio, www.clopaydoor.com
Insulation: ICYNENE, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, www.icynene.com
Louvers: Hunter Douglas Contract, Norcross, Ga., www.hunterdouglascontract.com
Metal wall panels: Alcoa Architectural Products, Eastman, Ga., www.alcoaarchitecturalproducts.com