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New Student Union, ASU
Polytechnic Campus
Atwater Commons
Hamilton Village Towers,
University of Pennsylvania
Kenyon Athletic Center
Original Student Center
Expansion
The Warehouse
Tangeman University Center
University of Chicago, Graduate School of
Business
University Center of Lake
County
Westminster Theatre & Cultural Center
and Coastline Community College Learning CenterOriginal Student Center Expansion
Public Architecture and Planning unifies and freshens UCSD's original cluster of activity buildings with a new walkway and outdoor rooms.
The fledgling University of California, San Diego (UCSD) opened in the 1960s amid the towering eucalyptus, which offered shade and ambience to an arid mesa near the Pacific Ocean. The Student Center—a half-dozen two-story, wood-frame buildings dating to 1976—stands in one of the fragrant groves. This “village” has evolved into a colony for student organizations and their enterprises, including a food co-op, bookstore, and newspapers. But as the number of groups mushroomed over time, the village grew makeshift outposts. Students intervened in 2003, when they passed a referendum to raise their fees to fund expansions of this center and a larger one, called the Price Center, which opened in 1989.
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Although it was supplanted by the Price Center, the original, 20,000-square-foot Student Center remains popular among students and has become an icon for campus social and political activism. UCSD hired the locally based firm Public Architecture and Planning to renovate and nearly double the old center’s size without detracting from its character or setting, which James Brown, AIA, principal and cofounder of Public, describes as “the immense, quiet power of the grove.”
The 2003 referendum specified perpetual uses and designated space. Brown also met individually with 30 student groups, staff, and campus committees and distilled their updated needs and ideas for the predetermined mix: the Women’s Center; the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Resource Center; meeting rooms; lounges; and dining areas. Public worked in two phases, the first devoted to 13,600 square feet of new construction, the second to renovating the existing center and appending a tree-houselike study lounge, encompassing 3,500 square feet, to the building’s southeast wing.
To the north of the complex stands Mandeville Center, a monumental, 1975-vintage arts building designed by Los Angeles Modernist A. Quincy Jones. “It’s so close and so wonderful that we had to respond to it,” Brown says of the wood-and-concrete cultural hub, which is laced with practice studios, patios, and walkways. Public designed a new, two-level building that would, as Brown says, “mediate” between Mandeville and the Student Center.
On the south end of the refurbished Student Center, above an existing student store, Public added a glass-enclosed study lounge that Brown calls “a platform in the trees.” The addition and its 10-foot-wide, wraparound wood deck are protected by a box-shaped wood shade structure with irregularly spaced slats to admit air, sunlight, and views.
Formal name of project: Original Student Center Expansion
Location: La Jolla, CA
Gross square footage: 15,000 square feet (Phase I); 21,000 square feet renovated, 3,500 new construction (Phase II)
Total construction cost: $5 million (phase I), $5 million (phase II)
Completion Date: June 2006
Owner: University of California, San Diego
Architect:
Public Architecture and Planning
4441 Park Blvd
San Diego, Ca 92116
(619)682-4083
Fax (619)682-4084
www.publicdigital.com
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