Architect: Van Woert Bigotti Architects | Category: Institutional/Civic | Location: Winnemucca, NV
Purpose
Great Basin College is located 180 miles east of Reno in the rural community of Winnemucca, Nevada. The college existed as one building for over 25 years, and the Administrative team looked to this new building as an exciting opportunity to create “campus.” The existing building lacked in presence and experience. Great Basin College requested that this Health Sciences building offer a more uplifting, positive and inspiring presence. They wished for a building that was modern yet humble in a fashion that would honor the existing context of residential fabric and set a precedent for future growth on and around the college property.
2023 AIA Nevada Juror’s Commentary
Interior spaces feel welcoming, warm and inviting — feels like a place I want to be in. Creating new aesthetic for campus, not working within the existing context. There is an openness with views to landscape, connecting interior to exterior. Love the texture and warmth of materials as a counterpoint to the exterior views. The interior circulation encourages student/ faculty interaction while also visually connecting to outdoor views and campus spaces. Hope as the campus grows, new buildings can leverage these outdoor spaces and create meaningful and climate-appropriate exterior courtyards and circulation.
Challenge
With great aspirations to provide a transformative identity and experience with this building, the constrained budget and the context governed the process. The college’s limited funding source encouraged creative efficiencies. Designed during an era of one of the most quickly rising costs of construction, the design team was challenged late into Design Development to step back and create an ultra-simple structure to accommodate the entire original program within budget.
Solution
Through optimization and using exposed systems as architecture, the design team was able to keep the costs within budget. In this project, the driver was both the cost constraints and the need to honor the humble residential context. The extended shed roof provides an economical approach to form and contextual response. Once committed to using the structural, mechanical, electrical and landscape elements in their simplest ways, the architecture became an effort of celebrating the elements and maximizing the impact. Details such as CMU along the residential street edge kept the campus life from imposing upon the neighborhood. The transparency facing the campus context helps to enhance the idea of “connectivity” and activate the pedestrian experience.
Interiors
The interior architecture supports the overall goals of connectivity, transparency and simplicity tied together with a timeless ambiance. We chose selective areas to highlight as counterpoints within the field of exposed systems. These elements emphasized wayfinding, entry and places for collaborative learning. The interior exterior connections are also delineated with groundplane elements and continuity of materials and forms extending from the outside in.
Site
A small campus plaza acts as the entry statement between the original building and this new Health Science Building and is a connective element for future campus growth.
The existing building lacked in presence and experience. Great Basin College requested that this Health Sciences building offer a more uplifting, positive and inspiring presence. They wished for a building that was modern yet humble in a fashion that would honor the existing context of residential fabric and set a precedent for future growth on and around the college property.
