Square Footage
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8,723 S.F. |
Program/Scope
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A new addition to a 50-year-old federal government facility in San Dimas. The program called for a 90-seat conference and training room with three smaller breakout rooms, exhibition space and reception area, all located immediately adjacent to the existing research and development and administration buildings. The new space will be used to showcase the new technology developed by the R&D branches to various other branches of the Forest Service. |
Budget / Construction Cost
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$2,000,000 |
Unusual Characteristics
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The design team was allotted an extremely tight deadline of six weeks to conduct all activities spanning from schematic design through plan approval. |
Special Challenges
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The original concrete structures on the Forest Service campus are austere, constructed by the government in the 1950’s. The Forest Service wished to update its image from imposing and no-nonsense, to modern and "high-tech". Similarly, current training practices vary significantly from those when the original building was designed. A new layout had to be created to meet the needs of the department’s contemporary education program. The new look for the building is derived from the interface between the history of the Forest Service and the necessary changes it has made to meet the needs of the 21st century. |
Solution
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The design team wanted to depart significantly from the original building design while incorporating it into the flow of the new building. This was accomplished by creating a new main entrance that faced the street (the original faced perpendicularly to the street). From the reception area, visitors and employees can elect to enter the new rooms or the existing administration building. The new structure literally engages the old to create a new massing arrangement without leaving the original structure looking obsolete. To acknowledge the history of the Forest Service, natural materials were used wherever possible --all the while keeping lines clean and unadulterated: exposed gluelam beams, river rock walls, indigenous plant materials and green building materials wherever possible. The latest audio/visual technology was incorporated into the new training rooms. All the training rooms were required to be as acoustically dead as possible. This is because many instruction sessions will be held as videoconferences with trainees located in a sister facility in Montana. |
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