Sensational Student Services Center

by Jonathan McGaha | March 31, 2014 12:00 am

A multi-metal mix makes a majestic Mesa College marvel

A new, bold and vibrant 85,000-square-foot, four-story student services center at the Mesa Community College campus in San Diego provides a one-stop-shop destination for campus student services. The project provides a new arrival point and entry on the north side of campus, connects the upper and lower campus, becomes a central location for students to access services ranging from admissions to tutoring, and, most importantly, the building and site provides opportunities for student interaction.

Spaces extend from every floor to form new gathering areas on campus, from the arrival and performance plaza at the bottom to the café and overlook terrace at the top. The building’s open atrium assists student with wayfinding visibility and encourages interaction between 16 different departments. Its variegated and textured skin, inspired by the colors, textures and patterns of the surrounding canyon, responds to each orientation and internal program with larger and smaller openings and overhangs, maximizing daylight and minimizing heat gain and glare.

Complete façade system

One of the most integral components of the building is its façade. It consists of aluminum batten seam metal panels from Louisville, Ky.-based Metal Sales Manufacturing Corp., and both stainless steel composite panels and aluminum composite material
(ACM) panels from Eastman, Ga.-based Alcoa Architectural Products. This included the round column covers along with the soffit, wall and fascia panels.

The choice of metal was made based on durability and aesthetic goals. “The complexity of the site and program resulted in a building with many sides, exposures and interface details,” says James Gabriel, AIA, principal at ARCHITECTS hanna gabriel wells, San Diego. “Metal has the advantage of being fabricated into numerous configurations and detail sets. This allows the design team to develop building skin systems with confidence knowing that the chosen materials will be able to meet the needs of design and performance.”

Painted metal composite material was chosen for this project because of the unique panel shapes and sizes and the color palettes that were specified. “The Reynobond ACM panels allowed the architect to achieve the flatness required in the thin elongated fascia panels, plus there’s the benefit of securing a 30-year paint finish warranty for the Reynobond panels that use a Colorweld coating,” says Frank Meehan, West Coast sales manager of Alcoa Architectural Products.

The campus logo on the center’s elevator tower is very dynamic due to the reflective nature of the stainless steel. The “Mesa” graphic changes from bold to subtle depending on the time of the day and vantage point.

Aluminum and stainless steel

The custom-width batten seam panels with a Duranar coating in three varying colors form a random textured pattern to create a visual wall texture in both light and shadow. The combination of warm colors responds to the natural colors of the adjacent Tecolote Canyon. Stainless steel composite panels in satin and mill finishes on the exterior elevator tower create a shining and variegated contrast to the rest of the building. Stainless steel is very durable and extends the life of the building. Colorweldcoated aluminum composite panels weave in and out of the building to provide visual continuation between the indoors and outside. They work in conjunction with an aluminum and glass curtainwall from Vernon, Calif-based Arcadia Inc. to create a complete façade system.

“Aluminum panels were chosen for their noncorrosive nature,” Gabriel says. “The material finished with the Duranar coating provides a long-lasting, low-maintenance building skin. Both sheet metal and composite panels were used throughout the project. The composite panels provide large, flat surfaces to compliment the dynamic textural quality of the batten seam panels. The various metal panels were field measured, shop fabricated and easily installed in a timely sequence.”

Santee, Calif.-based American Sheet Metal was the student center’s fabricator. According to Robert Burner, president of American Sheet Metal, the Reynobond ACM wall and soffit panels were 4-mm fire-rated composite with custom high gloss white. There was 18,000 square feet of panel fabricated and installed for this project. The ACM column covers were made from a 4-mm PE core custom color Iron Mountain. Column covers consisted of 3-footdiameter columns and up to 16 feet tall. A total of 7,000 square feet of Reynobond material completed all the column covers for this project.

The aluminum batten seam panels were constructed from 0.05-aluminum with three custom colors, Butternut, Compatible Cream and Kaffee, and with three varied panel widths, 10 inches, 15.5 inches and 23.5 inches. Total square footage of 0.05-aluminum panels was 15,000 square feet. The panels at the elevator tower were made from type 316 stainless steel with two different finishes. One was a heavy #4 brushed finish and the other was dull 2b finish. The panels were installed in a random checker board type pattern. The total square footage of stainless steel panels consisted of 4,000 square feet.

On a hill

One of the most interesting elements of the student center is one that most visitors never see: a four-part retaining wall system for the 50-foot cliff, which the four-story building butts up against. The new building and site work stabilize this existing 50- foot slope at the edge of campus, forming a series of terraced interior and exterior spaces in a shared communal setting, providing a variety of places for students to hang out, see and be seen.

“Because the building was cut into the side of a hill, access was very limited,” Burner says. “Scaffolding needed to be erected the full height of the building in order for crews to have access. There was no room for aerial lift equipment or any other means, scaffolding was the only way. Once all the panels were installed, inspected and cleaned, scaffolding was then removed.”

Energy efficient

The project was designed to be very energy efficient, exceeding California’s strict energy standards by 36 percent. The design team paid close attention to the building envelope, orientation, systems efficiency and daylight harvesting to reduce energy demands. “The project is designed with healthy interior environments that maximize interaction

between the 16 different departments surrounding the naturally daylit, four-story atrium,” Burner says. Additionally, water efficiency, stormwater cleaning, and clean power from the campus photovoltaic system all added to this LEED Gold certified project. All of these above features make people feel good about coming to school. They appreciate the project’s interesting architecture and its tessellated façade gathers many onlookers. The open atrium space maximizes natural light and has met its goal of fostering collaborative discussion. The architects had a very difficult site and took advantage of terracing to minimize wasted space. One juror on the San Diego Architectural Foundation summed the student center up best calling it “a handsome building that does a hell of a job terrain-wise.”

[sidebar]

Mesa College Student Services Center, San Diego

Completed: June 2012
Total square feet: 85,000 square feet
Building owner: San Diego Community College
Architect: ARCHITECTS hanna gabriel wells, San Diego
General contractor: PCL Construction, San Diego
Civil engineer: Snipes-Dye Associates, La Mesa, Calif.
Landscape architect: MLA Design Studio, San Diego
Metal panel fabricator/installer: American Sheet Metal, Santee, Calif.
Curtainwall: Arcadia Inc., Vernon, Calif., www.arcadiainc.com[1]
Metal wall panels: Alcoa Architectural Products, Eastman, Ga., www.alcoaarchitectualproducts.com[2],
and Metal Sales Manufacturing Corp., Louisville, Ky., www.metalsales.us.com[3]

Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/articles/sensational-student-services-center/

---