Knox College Whitcomb Art Center
Project site: Previously developed land
Building program type(s): Education – College/University (campus-level)
Design Performance section diagram of Knox College Whitcomb Art Center. Image: Lake|Flato Architects
It was bluntly apparent that a lean budget would be the controlling parameter of this project alongside pedagogy and alongside high-sustainability aspirations. To create this aspirational facility within budget, every design move needed to serve multiple project goals. The team initiated a kickoff charrette to investigate these goals and seek out synergies between them. This was a truly integrated collaborative process wherein all stakeholders, design consultants, the contractor, and even some anticipated subcontractors and fabricators gathered for two intensive days of visioning, programming, constructibility explorations, and goal setting.
The goals and strategies that emerged from this charrette exhibited the strong collective desire for a deeply efficient, high-performing, and aspirational building that would be a showcase for the department’s pedagogy and, by extension, a showcase of environmental and resource stewardship. The next task was how to integrate and construct these goals with cohesion and simplicity using the fewest moves possible to stay within budget.
"This is a traditional form reimagined in a unique and refreshing way. By using economical steel frame and reusing finishes, they made something special, taking a brown field and restoring the natural ecology, done beautifully." - Jury Comment
The building’s iconic sawtooth roof form became the singular key design move in this project to unify and solve all the project’s major goals in one fell swoop. The repeating asymmetrically shaped gabled bay system of the building was developed and rigorously honed specifically to provide the following interlinked features: a hyper-efficient pre-engineered structure using the lowest possible amount of steel; flexible open floor areas in support of the department’s pedagogy of open-ended learning-by-making; north-tilting steeply angled skylights harvesting the ideal quantity and quality of natural glare-free daylight as the building’s primary illumination system; south-tilting large roof planes at the optimum tilt for a planned photovoltaic array to generate the building’s electricity; and a demonstrative set of revealed construction details that celebrate the raw materials that make up the building in alignment with the pedagogic focus on the physical making of things.
