San Jacinto College, Anderson-Ball Classroom Building

Pasadena, Texas

Firm

Kirksey Architecture

Client

San Jacinto College

Area

122,000 sq.ft.

Total Cost

$42,000,000

Completion Date

02/2022

Joe Aker

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Design Team
Gary Machicek, Michelle Old, Kevin Giuseppetti

The new San Jacinto College Classroom Building is the latest addition to the school’s Central Campus. As the nation’s largest mass timber classroom building, it exhibits the mass timber structure throughout all public spaces and on its exterior façade. The building looks to educate not only in the classroom, but also through educational plaques that highlight the building’s sustainable features.

Situated at the previous site of the Anderson Tech and Ball Tech buildings, the Classroom Building reuses the existing foundation and attaches to the existing Davison Building. During demolition, façade elements such as a bas-relief panel and marble panels from the two previous buildings were installed in public spaces.

The building has two wings with a two-story lobby. Instructional spaces consist of 56 classrooms, a robotics lab, and a lecture hall. Student gathering spaces are formal—enclosed study space and huddle rooms—and informal—open collaborative zones at ends of the building and the lobby.

This is a high-performing building with several sustainable strategies, such as the reuse of existing building foundations, electrochromic glazing, grey water reuse, tubular daylighting, photovoltaic panels on the roofs, and mass timber. The building’s mass timber structure consists of glue laminated beam and columns and cross-laminated timber for floor decks and roof decks.