CENTER FOR INFORMATION AND COLLABORATION

December 11, 2019

The University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture, is in need of an expansion. This center would be called the CIC.  The Architecture that follows serves to be a unification between CAPLA and the surrounding colleges. The specific moods that are conveyed in the building are warmth, happiness, togetherness, curiosity, and openness. It is a gem in the courtyard that is the site of the building, rising high, five stories in the sky, permeating the skyline and shining bright within the University area. The first floors serve as the collaborative living room, while the upper floors are as follows, the library collections, open study areas, then the study rooms and visiting faculty offices, and finally the administration on the top floor.

The orientation of the building was put onto the site because of the Sun’s East to West position in the sky. The building’s overall elongated form allows the East and West Facades to be minimized in their exposure to the sun. This will decrease the building’s energy use and increase the overall comfort of the building. The structure of the architecture is wooden glulam construction grown from sustainably sourced forests. This will also decrease the carbon footprint because trees capture carbon from the atmosphere. To stabilize the structure, large cross tension lines provide the necessary shear protection. These cross the entire building. The largely glass facade is encased in a terracotta exterior fenestration covered in vegetation which provides shade from the sun. All of the windows can therefore open to the exterior during the temperate months of the year, and the terracotta fenestration will provide a natural barrier to the outside. 

The site will be transformed into a collage of materials, each taking up a section of the courtyard. Trees, flowers, and bushes will all dot the landscape. The building will open up to this landscape by having the first floor be open floor plan and highly fluid to the outside. The stairs that touch down to the floor plane will be highly visible and accessible. The flow of pedestrians around the building is defined by a path, and the vehicular traffic is defined by stone pavement.