Brookhaven College breaks ground on new sustainable Workforce and Continuing Education building
SHW Group designed the 28,500-square-foot facility to be a flexible, multi-purpose building
DALLAS, March 7, 2009 – Ground has been broken at the site of the future 28,500-square-foot Workforce and Continuing Education Building at Brookhaven College, part of the Dallas County Community College District. Located near Dallas in Farmers Branch, Texas, it was designed to be a sustainable, flexible, multi-purpose building, housing corporate and continuing education programs, general classrooms and support space. The $6 million facility is slated to open in January 2010.
Dallas-based SHW Group, one of the world’s largest educational architecture and design firms, designed the building with the goal of providing a home for programs that have been displaced from the main campus due to lack of classroom space. Located across a major street, these programs were previously unable to offer late night coursework for their students and lacked areas where families can wait while a parent is in class.
Once complete, the new Workforce and Continuing Education Building will be Brookhaven College’s “home-base,” where it will serve its business and industry clients, housing the college’s Corporate and Community Programming and Workforce Grant Research and Support Center. More than 15 new classrooms will be included, all of which will have laptop carts so they can be used as either a traditional classroom or a computer lab. In addition, a separate computer/information technology lab, four multipurpose rooms, two conference rooms, a lobby area, break stations, departmental offices, and outdoor patios and gardens are all included in the building’s design.
“The new facility will give the college more flexibility in planning course offerings, responding to local business and industry needs with a corporate services department to develop training programs,” said Eric Miller, project architect at SHW Group. “These programs, located both off-site and on-campus, will fuel the local market and bring great success to both Brookhaven College and its students.”
“We also designed the building so the interior environment can be adjusted and changed over the course of a day, a month, a semester or over the years to afford the users the greatest opportunity to manipulate that space and then form the learning environment inside those classrooms to the best of their ability,” added Miller.
In the design process, the project team paid attention to environmental stewardship, incorporating numerous sustainable amenities and technologies. In addition to buying all construction materials locally, the building’s polished concrete floor and low VOC paints and sealants will not release gas volatile organic components into the building, significantly improving indoor air quality. Furthermore, expanses of north-facing glass will allow ample indirect cool natural light into the building, which will improve the human experience inside the building without requiring an expanded mechanical system. A highly-reflective roof was designed to minimize heat gain and in turn reduce mechanical system requirements. Additionally, the project team improved the existing site drainage in order to reduce the amount of run-off once the building is complete. Finally, the use of a grass pave system for the required fire lane will further reduce run-off and visually improve the north court of the building.
In addition to SHW Group as the lead architect, other project team members include DMJM Management as the project manager; Phillips May as the construction manager; Reed Wells Benson as the mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) engineer; Charles Gojer & Associates as the civil engineer and the structural engineer; Carolyn Kelley as the landscape architect; and Datacom Technology Group as the information technology consulting firm.
For more information about SHW Group, please visit www.shwgroup.com. For more information on Brookhaven College, please visit www.brookhavencollege.edu.
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Media Contact: Claire Bloxom
claire@coopersmithagency.com, (214) 329-9191
