Warren Skaaren Environmental Learning Center at Westcave Preserve
Round Mountain, Texas
Robert Jackson & Michael McElhaney Architects

Robert Jackson and Michael McElhaney tread lightly on the fragile Westcave Preserve with a center featuring environmental-science exhibits.

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	Click here for slide show. Photo © Paul Bardagjy

By Ingrid Spencer

"We started out with a chair under a tree," says John Ahrns, manager of the Westcave Preserve, a 30-acre nature sanctuary located 50 miles southwest of Austin, Texas. Today, 33 years after Ahrns arrived, that chair has grown into the Warren Skaaren Environmental Learning Center, a 3,030-square-foot classroom designed by Austin-based architects Robert Jackson, AIA, and Michael McElhaney, AIA. The center integrates green building technologies and exhibits that illustrate and demystify natural science.

After decades of visitor traffic, Jackson explains, the Westcave Preserve "was being loved to death." In a canyon at the heart of the property, hikers inadvertently trampled delicate plants and polluted a grotto at the base of a 40-foot waterfall. The Westcave Preserve Corporation approached the architects to design a building for the canyon's trailhead. With the goal of reducing human impact on the site, the group wanted both an educational facility to serve the 10,000 school children who visit Westcave annually as well as a headquarters for the preserve's managers.

Locally quarried Glenrose stone blocks, peppered with fossils and iron tinctures, form the building's walls. The architects selected a finish of uncoated cement-lime stucco, backed by recycled-content cellulose insulation. A curved, metal standing-seam roof seems to hover above the building due to a band of clerestory windows beneath it that admits light into the building. Eight-foot overhangs shelter 2,000 square feet of extra outdoor classroom space.

A freestanding, 1,700-watt photovoltaic panel near the south elevation generates a substantial amount of energy-more, sometimes, than the building needs to operate—and it functions as one of the learning center's educational tools. Kids enjoy watching numbers on the data readouts as Westcave's guides demonstrate how the unit sends power back to the electricity grid. Additional green elements include a ground-source, water-chilled heat pump; three rainwater-collecting cisterns; high-efficiency uplighting; and composting toilets (housed in a separate structure).

Like the photovoltaic system, most of the center's educational exhibits stem from and are integrated into its design. A "sky map" embedded in the terrazzo floor of the main orientation room illustrates Earth's relationship to the sun. Modeled after a 300-year-old observatory at the Santa Maria degli Angeli basilica in Rome, this exhibit employs a glazed aperture in the ceiling that allows a ray of sunlight to shine on a narrow metal plate notched with the days of the year. As the sunbeam moves across the plate, its angle gradually shifts each day and marks the passing of seasons.

Formal name of project:
Warren Skaaren Environmental Learning Center at Westcave Preserve

Location:
Round Mountain, Texas

Gross square footage:
3,030 sq. ft. interior with 2,000 sq. ft. exterior porches

Total Construction Cost:
$1.2 million

Owner:
Westcave Preserve Corporation & Lower Colorado River Authority

Architect:
Robert Jackson & Michael McElhaney Architects
1135 West 6th Street, Ste. 125
Austin, TX 78703
512-472-5132 tel.
512-472-5158 fax
www.jacksonmcelhaney.com

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