Santa Barbara City College

West Campus Center

Santa Barbara, CA

A flagship community college on California’s treasured central coast, found itself a victim of its own success. As the college’s educational reputation grew, enrollment grew, and classroom and faculty office space was in perpetually shorter and shorter supply. In addition the school’s existing educational facilities were not configured to easily embrace the latest in educational learning modalities and technologies.

The college developed a program to address these needs and sought funding for a new classroom and office building. The site selected for the project was located on the college’s west campus, a narrow strip of land that had been home to a cluster of aging portable classrooms in various stages of decay.

The building provides a mixture of traditional classrooms and experimental “studio classrooms” to accommodate active, collaborative, small-group learning environments where instructors can act as “facilitators.” Spaces are equipped with a variety of visual displays (multi-media, smart boards, etc.). In addition, the student study areas feature flexible interaction spaces and multi-media support. The student and faculty study areas are equipped with collaborative study pods to support spontaneous breakout sessions between instructors and students.

The building features energy and water usage displays, a second-story roof garden planted with native, drought-resistant plants that the college and the community now use as an educational resource. The identified sustainability goal of achieving LEED Silver certification was greatly exceeded when the project became the college’s first LEED Platinum certified building.