On Friday, September 22, Lionakis received two Honor Awards and one Merit Award in Education Design from the Concrete Masonry Association of California and Nevada. The honors banquet was held at the Pasea Hotel and Spa along the Pacific Coast Highway in beautiful Huntington Beach, California and the team was thrilled to showcase their hard work on three distinct educational design projects.
Evergreen Valley College Automotive Technology Building
San Jose, California
Honor Award – Education Design
The Jury’s decision to award this design was informed by the fact that Evergreen Valley College Automotive Technology Building’s concrete masonry units are utilized to provide building stability and express the function while acting as a sound barrier for the use as an automotive maintenance training facility. The building offers an elegant horizontal form that integrates natural light into the interior spaces. The roof overhang positioned above the service bays creates shading and protection that is integrated with the building form. The design is completely appropriate for its function and use with simple economical elements that make the building appear larger than it is. The overall design solution creates a comfortable building that nevertheless implies an important status of the academic program through the design. This Automotive Technology Building is also impressive by achieving LEED® Platinum.
Architect Jonathan McMurtry filled us in on the fact that automotive technology is no longer your dad’s greasy, dirty garage – the new Automotive Technology Building is equipped with day lit vehicle bays, advanced diagnostic computer systems and the latest vehicles for hands-on learning opportunities. With a growing student body and new vehicular technology such as hybrid cars, automotive technology is in the midst of a transformation.
New Pacific Trails Middle School
San Diego, California
Honor Award – Education Design
New Pacific Trails Middle School was chosen by the Jury because it is a cohesive design with complementary forms and materials. The front elevation of the school is a pleasant composition of the building geometry, and the canopies and trellis really add to the human scale. Integration of the courtyard gathering spaces for students enhance the social culture on campus, which is important in middle school. The use of the concrete masonry unit wing walls are a dynamic element that offer an enjoyable inside to outside connection. Likewise, the sectional doors that provide indoor and outdoor classroom spaces are an excellent touch and very useful for the hands-on courses being taught.
Architect Laura Knauss reveals that it was the intent of the project design to be a more youthful complement to the adjacent high school, using a brighter color palette and student-centric design strategies. Designed around a central student quad, outdoor dining commons and adjacent media center, the campus core feels more like a college Student Union rather than a middle school campus, providing student gathering, dining and outdoor learning spaces.
Calistoga Junior/Senior High School New Gymnasium and Multi-Purpose Building
Calistoga, California
Merit Award – Education Design
The Jury expressed that the Calistoga Junior/Senior High School New Gymnasium & Multi-Purpose Building shows a great application of design. It represents simple forms with elegant materials that connect and show an expressed transparency. The exterior and interior spaces are well scaled to the students, and the use of concrete masonry units add a strong textural expression that gives the transparency a solid surrounding. The CMU knee wall on the façade of the multipurpose building similarly delivers a stable feel to the design.
Architect Laura Knauss let us know that the vision for the campus was brought to life with a process that included a workshop with 30 students. These students were engaged in exercises that included voting on their design preferences as well as discussions regarding the design elements that were most important to them. Not surprisingly, the students that were raised in this rich agricultural area emphasized “green” (the school color) and “green” (environmentally friendly) in their goals for the campus.
Congratulations to the entire Lionakis design, architectural and engineering teams who all worked hard and deserve the applause and recognition for all three of these outstanding projects.
