In January, Santa Fe Community College and the construction firm McCarthy New Mexico begin work on the college’s Higher Education Center. The 34,000-square-foot building is being developed on approximately 5 acres at the southeast corner of the old College of Santa Fe property, at the corner of Yucca Street and Siringo Road.
“It is across the street from Santa Fe High School and we will be doing some dual-credit programs in the daytime, it will be heavily used by our higher-education partners in the evening, and we’ll have some regular Santa Fe Community College classes there,” said Randy Grissom, acting SFCC president.
“It is across the street from Santa Fe High School and we will be doing some dual-credit programs in the daytime, it will be heavily used by our higher-education partners in the evening, and we’ll have some regular Santa Fe Community College classes there,” said Randy Grissom, acting SFCC president.
“It provides a closer location for the state employees downtown to take lunchtime classes. And in the two flex labs we hope to be doing medical-related training for the hospital just down the street. We’ll probably be doing some American Heart Association-type training and some emergency medical training, continuing education for hospital employees.”
The Santa Fe Community College Higher Education Center (HEC) was launched in 2011. In partnership with New Mexico Highlands University, the Institute of American Indian Arts, New Mexico State University, and the University of New Mexico, it gives students the option of earning a bachelor’s or master’s degree without leaving Santa Fe.
The new HEC building is a U-shaped building around a courtyard. It will include 15 classrooms and two flexible lab spaces — all two-story except over the flex labs. “The flex-lab rooms are 900-square-foot spaces and can be closed off for use on weekends, said Henry Mignardot, SFCC director of facilities.
The HEC will use energy-efficient heating and cooling via a ground-source heat pump. The project includes a 175-kilowatt, rooftop photovoltaic system, plus an additional four panels in the parking lot that may be used for instruction purposes.
“This facility will most likely be LEED Gold-certified, so we have continuous insulation; it’s like a big Igloo cooler,” said Matthew McKim, principal, Dekker Perich Sabatini Architects. “It’s steel-frame, mostly EFIS [exterior insulation and finishing system], and it has a very robust infrastructure for wifi.
“One space that’s kind of interesting we’re calling the collaborative learning lab. You enter from exterior doors or from the courtyard and it’s a big socializing space, where you can get computers and use wifi.”
The learning lab will have furniture that can easily be moved and stored, so will also function for lectures and other events.
“There’s a lot of natural light, so when you walk into the collaborative learning lab, you’ll be able to look through the transparent building into the courtyard. We’re trying to blur the inside-outside,” McKim said. “As far as the shading, we’re trying to do something that’s very New Mexican, using the building itself. The U-shaped windows — which have been used at the college, so it’s kind of part of the SFCC brand — are inset in the double-studded walls that will be up to 3 1/2 feet thick on the west side.”
The college will employ a money-saving “hoteling” strategy at HEC, where many faculty members will use immediate, temporary work stations rather than having their own desks. The overall idea is a building that is efficient and flexible.
Among the previous Santa Fe projects of the Albuquerque-based Dekker Perich Sabatini firm are 48 units of student housing for the College of Santa Fe (now Santa Fe University of Art & Design), Plaza Santa Fe Phase II, the Thornburg Investment Management office building, the Zocalo condominiums, and the Bicycle Technologies International building near SFCC.
The college and McCarthy will begin work on the $9 million HEC building this month and is planning for substantial completion in January 2015.
By: Paul Weideman (The Santa Fe New Mexican)
By: Paul Weideman (The Santa Fe New Mexican)
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