With both expansion and significant modernization/reconstruction planned for its original city-block campus, the College needed to expand across Carson Street to its southerly campus, occupying a long linear site pocketed between the physical education complex and the College’s main parking area.
The program called for technologically-current, contemporary facilities for teaching, administering, and meeting at a significantly larger scale than any structures to date. At the same time, the College President and Board required an architecture having the same intimacy and character as the Mediterranean Revival architecture of the original campus.
The complex threads itself in 3 parts along the length of the narrow site, with each part having its own distinct quadrangle or courtyard; one for the classroom complex, one for the meeting complex, and one for administration. In combination with durable materials equal or surpassing the original buildings (smooth cement plaster, steel windows, two-piece clay tile), this decentralized approach resulted in a surprisingly intimate building for the overall scale of the program.
