Education
LIFE SCIENCE BUILDING
Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, California
Founded in 1911, Loyola Marymount University is a 150-acre bluff top campus recently named among the “10 Most Beautiful Campuses” by the Princeton Review. The University expects to begin construction of the LEED Silver, state-of-the-art, four-story Science Building and three-level subterranean parking structure in 2012.
WHITIN DESIGN WORKS and the project design team have completed Design Development for the Science Building. WDW is collaborating with CO Architects on design of the tri-level green roof circulation ramp and outdoor classroom terraces. The goal is to seamlessly blend the over-structure landscape with the surrounding natural grade and to weave the landscape elements into the fabric of the building system thereby providing important benefits such as temperature regulations and waste water filtration. In addition to LEED workshops, there have been numerous User Group workshops with LMU faculty and administration to identify programmatic uses.
To emphasize LMU’s motto “encouragement of learning”, aspects of science have inspired the design of the outdoor spaces and landscape elements. Materials from the periodic table are depicted in a creative paving pattern and the ‘water feature’ is an abstract spin on atomic matter. Along a walk called the “Arc of Time”, plants have been selected for teaching botanical evolution and reproduction in small outdoor “cloister” spaces