In the 40 years of occupying the campus, La Jolla Country Day School reached a point of self-introspection. The school determined it was time to readdress the learning environment to best serve the needs of current and future students. The campus environment and facilities form the basis of appeal for students, faculty and staff who choose to attend or work at the school. In order to maintain and improve valued resources on campus, FPBA and campus representatives addressed land capacity and program distribution in their master plan that encompassed classroom size, educational program and building program; open space and recreational areas; parking, student drop-off and circulation; and service and support areas throughout the campus.
La Jolla Country Day School retained FPBA to provide programming services to define the spatial and design requirements for two new campus facilities consisting of a Campus Commons and a Middle School Campus Complex on the existing La Jolla Country Day School campus. FPBA and La Jolla Country Day resolved to integrate the school’s six pillars of character into all levels of the program and culture: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, caring, justice, fairness, civic virtue and citizenship. The Middle School Campus Complex consists of consolidated, general-purpose classrooms for core and elective classes incorporating outdoor green space and administrative offices.
FPBA and C.W. Driver joined forces to design and construct the School of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at San Diego State University. Through the design-build process, the team assisted the university in meeting its LEED goals by identifying components of the existing building able to be reused during the renovation. Existing classrooms and lab spaces were renovated for use by undergraduate, masters and doctoral level students in speech-language pathology, communicative sciences, audiology and American Sign Language/deaf studies. Fast-tracked for completion in six months, FPBA and C.W. Driver successfully completed the 28,000-square-foot, two-story renovation, creating the perfect home for teachers, students and others to instruct, research, learn and improve their way of life.
In this project completed for the University of California, Irvine, FPBA sought to evoke the facility’s mission of providing a better quality life to people. Common areas and amenities provide balance to the important, focused research work in the laboratories areas. Working with the existing constraints of the low-clearance basement proved to be the biggest challenge, as the space receives almost no natural light. To counteract this, uplifting colors are applied throughout the space, and the general ambience is greatly enhanced with the high ceilings and direct/indirect lighting that bounces off ceilings. The resulting facility maximizes research space, including bench, shelving and equipment. BIM enabled FPBA to realistically model the space and utility coordination before the first construction activity occurred, saving the entire team time, money and rework. Should future changes need to be made, they will be designed with the benefit of an accurate 3D model of all existing conditions.
La Jolla Country Day School (LJCDS) is a co-educational, non-sectarian, independent school providing a college-preparatory education for 1,050 students in Nursery through Grade 12 in La Jolla, California. The Library Academic Center, located in the heart of the prestigious La Jolla Country Day School campus, is the signature building and new front door to the campus. The new library houses an art gallery, admissions suite and lower school library. An adjacent multipurpose room offers “flex” space – whether auditorium seating for 150, performance, testing or meeting space. The second floor houses the middle and upper school library that includes seminar rooms for small group work and the Learning Resource Center for mentoring and tutoring. The third floor houses staff offices and the board conference room. The Library Academic Center is a facility that demonstrates a commitment to social progress through the school’s mission of preparing students for a lifetime of intellectual exploration, personal growth and social responsibility.
This project is a combination of three separate projects linked together as a phased relocation of four different departments within the College of Science at San Diego State University. FPBA created a new building design that met the needs of a modern university and integrated the building into a historic college campus. The first element of the project involved renovating the interior and exterior of the 1960, 132,000-square-foot chemistry/geology building to a state-of-the-art building with soft science classrooms, computer laboratories and offices. An essential part of the process included the decontamination of chemical, asbestos and lead paint hazards. The second element involved restructuring and modernizing 26,000 square feet of interior space within the business administration and math building, originally built in 1964. The third element involved replacing the substandard education building and constructing a 62,000-square-foot landscaped plaza connecting the major campus circulation paths.
The “Flexible by Design” program for Texas A&M University’s new 156,000-square-foot facility revolutionizes the production of vaccines and critical medical therapies. Encompassing academic, research and development activities under one roof with areas and functions to promote collaboration and cross fertilization of ideas, it is the “first-in-class” facility to potentially create vast opportunities in the biopharmaceutical industry and for the state of Texas. It has become an international destination for research and application of new technologies for the development of medications to combat diseases and serves as a model for future strategic national efforts to protect humanity from bio-terror threats and attacks.
The LEED Platinum UCI Alumni Center establishes a presence that extends far beyond the borders of the campus to generate an economical, educational, and cultural bridge to the world. FPBA weaved this ideology into the design, and through a meticulous and collaborative process, the team yielded a facility embodying a balance of progressive architecture, sustainable design, and thoughtful campus integration with maximized program efficiencies. An elegant and welcoming folded glass plane at the entry envelops and ties together the compositional form of the building and announces itself as the entry to campus, creating a prominent doorway easily discernible to visitors and establishing a welcoming environment on the campus to students and alumni. Strong connections and seamless transitions to the natural environment create free-flowing spaces and an atmosphere of celebration. The nature of the facility and the location of the site dictate the form of the building, and the resulting design takes on that of an iconic marker.
