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CHASS Instruction and Research Facility, University of California at Riverside

Riverside, California
In progress

Academic offices and classroom building

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The College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS) building will include four stories, with high-traffic classrooms on the lower floors. Academic departments, interdisciplinary programs and faculty offices will occupy the upper floors. The building will be an integral part of the East Campus Entrance, currently being developed adjacent to the north edge of the building site. As such, CHASS has incorporated important campus planning features in the design. The building exterior will be clad in the traditional brick used throughout the campus. The scale of the building will relate to the Arts Building on the opposite side of the Fine Arts Mall.

Landscaping will be used selectively to tie into the existing campus master plan and the building will be designed to be LEED certified.

With its dual frontages on the Carillon Mall and the Fine Arts Mall, this site plays an important role in helping shape the most significant outdoor spaces on the UCR campus. The fundamental challenge has been to provide appropriate definition to these different but important landscaped spaces and at the same time to establish effective relationships with each of two diametrically dissimilar neighbors. To the east is the Physical Education building, architecturally neutral with large areas of brick and consolidated zones of fenestration, and to the west, the provocative presence of the Arts Building across the Fine Arts Mall. There is an opportunity here to make the existing and the new form a larger complex in which building volumes are so deployed as to make the spaces in between meaningfully deliberate, useful and pleasant.

The proximity of the Arts Building has made it the most specific formative influence on the design. The shape of the new building is essentially a "C," open towards the Arts Building. The two buildings are a pair, subtending a memorable campus space. The deferential posture of the new building allows the vistas from the Arts Building to be generous and will permit, from its upper floors, a view of the dramatic Box Springs Mountains. Together the two buildings make a portal for the proposed new campus entrance to the north. The specifics of the massing of the new building at this location make it a continuation of the plan gesture of the Arts Building without being subservient to that structure. To the south the stepped profile of the building allows for views of the vertical circulation element for faculty arriving from the Arts and Humanities complex. While in form the building is extremely responsive to the Arts Building, in material it will be a continuation of the light-colored brick theme prevalent on campus and particularly notable in the adjacent Physical Education building.

The project reinforces existing pedestrian circulation patterns on campus and adds an east-west circulation route leading from the expanded Student Union to the Fine Arts Building.

Major Components

Instructional Laboratories, Research Space, Multimedia Laboratory, Archive, Center for Ideas and Society, Faculty and Administrative Offices, General Assignment Classrooms

3 Academic Departments

Ethnic Studies, Religious Studies, Women's Studies

8 Interdisciplinary Programs

American Indian Studies, Asian Pacific/Southeast Asian Studies, Chicano Art & Social Action, Comparative Ancient Civilizations, Film & Visual Culture, Latin American Studies, New Media, and Southeast Asian Studies.

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners services

Program Verification, Architectural services through Design Development, Construction Documents and Construction Administration for exterior envelope and public spaces

Executive Architect

LEO A DALY, Los Angeles, CA

Landscape Architect

Burton & Company, Santa Monica, CA

Civil Engineer

KPFF, Los Angeles, CA

Structural

Saiful/Bouquet Inc., Pasadena, CA

Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing

M-E Engineers, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Audio-Visual

Menlo Scientific Acoustics, Inc., Topanga, CA

Lighting

Horton Lees Brogden, Culver City, CA

Cost Estimator

Cumming LLC, San Juan Capistrano, CA

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