UC Riverside Undergraduate Teaching & Learning Facility Riverside, California
The Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Facility (UTLF) at UC Riverside provides the University with critically needed classroom, laboratory, and dance studio space. This truly interdisciplinary building will foster collaboration between the three colleges represented in the building: College of Natural & Agricultural Sciences, The College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and Bourns College of Engineering.
Location
Riverside, California
Sector
Education
Service
Architecture
Client
University of California Riverside
Status
In Design
Size
100,000 SF
The UTLF infills the last remaining site on the northern edge of the academic core of the UC Riverside Campus, becoming a Gateway between academics, athletics, and Student Life, strengthening the Promenade and creating a Welcoming Hub of activity. Site responsive design techniques first looked at the existing figure-ground of the campus in an attempt to weave the placement and organization of the new project into the campus’s fabric. Second, we focused on existing pathways and user experience to further integrate the new UTLF complex to the site. The building’s open space design strengthens the campus connections and pedestrian activity, including the flow of students from north to south.
Creating a New Campus Gateway - Before and After
The challenge of how to create a new front door and Campus Gateway along University Avenue is integral to our site response. The axial condition and gateway moment are experienced on two different scales: first, by a vehicle approaching campus along University Avenue, and second, by a pedestrian transitioning onto campus from the western edge of the Promenade. Our design pushes the building mass to the northern edge of the site to confidently address the long view along University Avenue, while also reinforcing the edge of the formal promenade space to the North. The UTLF building provides a gateway threshold moment into the academic campus to the south.
Our design concept distributes laboratory, classroom, and dance space across the building to create an interdisciplinary culture that actively exposes students to other schools of thought. While there is only one dance space in the building, the prominence of dance in the courtyard, its visibility from inside the lobby, and outdoor performance space will expose students with the arts. This approach creates an exciting environment of human connectivity, discovery, and purpose.
Our strategy was inspired by Associate Provost and Chief of Staff Ken Baerenklau’s ambition that the building encourage “science students to take a dance class, and dance students to take a science class.”
The design provides a significant new and highly activated outdoor courtyard that extends the gateway experience into the campus. The dance studio pavilion and shaded outdoor performance area introduce student life into the courtyard, enlivening the greater precinct into the evening with performances and events. Extensive planting will provide a lush backdrop to the dance space, while shaded outdoor areas equipped with power and WIFI extend student collaboration into the landscape.
The internal layout revolves around a simple “barbell” organization that creates intuitive wayfinding and prioritizes the student experience in scholarly activity spaces and prominence of the monumental stairs.
Scholarly activity spaces and generous circulation spaces are distributed across all floors and at both ends of the building to take advantage of spectacular views of the Box Springs Mountains. These spaces will be bathed in gentle northern light from expansive glazing, often double height, minimizing use of artificial light and supporting student wellness.
To view all plans and diagrams, please visit our ‘Process’ Gallery.
The UTLF design focuses on and embraces how intersectionality impacts students in many ways. By acknowledging students’ unique identities and needs, the design integrates various solutions to address diversity, equity, inclusivity, and belonging. Our lecture halls are designed to provide additional area for improved ADA access, extended view angles, introduce glazing, and achieve industry leading universal access. Universal design improves space for everyone, not just for a few.
Through flexible building planning and a robust and open concrete structure, the adaptability of the building to change and adapt over time to current educational trends, changes in cohort sizes, teaching methodologies, student preferences, or technological capacities, can be more easily accommodated.
Each of the upper three levels of the UTLF features a 176’x44’ (7,745sf) lab capable open span space, and two 88’x35’ (3,080sf) classroom capable open span spaces. This lab compatible floor would be one of the largest on campus. This will allow UC Riverside to combine (or subdivide) rooms if there is a change in class sizes or student per-square-foot ratios. It also provides creative opportunity should there be a desire for a large bio-tech makerspace, research incubator space or an innovative space yet to be imagined.
