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Currently, the intersection of Tramview Road and Indian Canyon Drive is a quiet spot in the midst of the southern California desert, located just north of Palm Springs. But the expanse of land on its northwest corner is soon to be the home of the College of the Desert’s Palm Springs West Valley Campus, and, once built, it should represent groundbreaking territory for sustainable planning and design.

Last fall, the City of Palm Springs procured the 119 acre site and transferred it to the Desert Community College District. Describing the new West Valley Campus as a tablular rasa, or “clean slate,” the College of the Desert hopes to incorporate sustainability not only at the building level, but at the scale of land use and community integration. Cutting edge economic and business models are also being implemented.

“The opportunities are endless with this empty piece of land,” says James Matson, VP and Director of the L.A. office of HGA Architects and Engineers (HGA), and “the college administrators have been very progressive in their thinking.”

HGA will be directing master planning, programming, design and sustainability of the campus, which will completed in seven phases. Construction on the first phase is expected to begin in 2012, and will consist of 50,000 square feet of classroom, laboratory and office space organized around a central shaded courtyard. The campus plans to open its doors after Phase I is completed, in the fall of 2014. Later phases of campus development will push westward on the site and wrap around the existing James O. Jessie Desert Highland Unity Center, helping to tie the college into the existing community.

Integrating into the Business World

The sustainability goals set for the campus continue to push the conceptual envelope of what is possible. Going beyond net zero energy usage, the campus is implementing a Zero Plus plan. The College has partnered with Southern California Edison (SCE) to construct and operate GreenPark, a 60-acre solar farm that will be adjacent to the 59-acre campus proper. The GreenPark lease will not only provide for the college’s energy needs, but will create a revenue stream that assists in the development of college programs and services. SCE will benefit from using the site for controlled research and development, as well as for alternative energy training programs.

Other types of public/private ventures (PPVs) will also be utilized in the operation of the West Valley Campus. In addition to its 420,000 square feet of academic space, the campus will have 230,000 square feet of leasable area, including incubator space for small business startups. Community colleges increasingly find themselves playing host to small businesses in order to boost local economic development; an article by the American Association of Community Colleges states that close to 35 business incubators are operated by two-year colleges nationwide. For a college, the benefits of PPVs include not only revenues but job training for the student population. At the Palm Springs West Valley Campus, business development will center around four ‘pillars’: hospitality and tourism; media and the arts; allied health; and sustainability technology.

Designing for PPVs added a new ingredient into the overall planning of the campus, especially since the types of services to be provided are diverse. “There is a possibility, even, of a small hotel or an eco-resort,” says Matson, so, during design, “we needed to be sure to create spaces that were suitable for tenants, and provide things like separate energy meters,” says Matson.

Integrating into the Natural World

To optimize the campus’ environmental performance, HGA drew inspiration from the growing field of biomimicry. Matson explains that architectural elements are used across the campus to create microclimates, mimicking, for example, the way rows of trees offer wind protection. “We were able to slow the wind with perforated barriers — fences, trees, and such. Wind and blowing sand were big drivers of the design. We oriented the buildings perpendicular to the wind direction.” Perforated metal panels are another architectural feature which offer shade and allow the permeation of gentle breezes while blocking high winds. These panels fit well aesthetically with the mid-century modern building style that is characteristic of Palm Springs, too — a fitting gesture, since the completed campus will act as a gateway to the city.

Further inspiration was taken from the way “leaves on a tree collect and store energy. Our PV panels mimic this. And like leaves, the panels act as shading devices for the courtyard,” says Matson.

A desert landscape feature that will serve as an organizing device for the campus is a manmade arroyo, or dry river bed. “We created this to pay homage to the arroyo,” says Matson, “It will collect water and direct it to a retention pond, where it can percolate back into the ground.” Some of the water will be captured and stored for irrigation, a meaningful form of reuse since access to water is one of the biggest challenges for a desert location.

Making the most use of indoor and outdoor spaces is how Matson describes the overall goal of HGA’s design. And whether one considers the environmental model or the economic model that the campus will implement, the College of The Desert is proving its ability to find creative ways of optimizing space.

This September marks the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Although the design of the World Trade Center (WTC) site once dominated the news, coverage of the most significant construction site in the country has been quiet. Some might assume that progress is slow, which would be logical, given the complexity of the project: a range of stakeholders are involved, including government agencies, private developers, and civic organizations; nine diverse programs must coexist on only 11 acres; and multiple construction schedules must be coordinated at once.

Much of the progress at the World Trade Center has, in fact, taken place at or beneath the surface, and the first portion – a Memorial Plaza – is scheduled to open later this year. We created a guide to the nine programmatic elements under construction:

Office Towers

The construction of five new towers will drastically alter Lower Manhattan’s skyline, adding over 10 million square feet of office space.

Transportation Hub

The World Trade Center Transportation Hub designed by Santiago Calatrava will rival Grand Central Station in size, serving over 200,000 commuters daily. Calatrava compared the form to a bird being released from a child’s hand. Originally, the roof was designed to retract for added light and ventilation, but this feature was eliminated due to budget restraints. Construction crews have begun installing a Vierendeel Truss that will support the roof, and they have excavated and poured slabs at many levels below grade. The Transportation Hub is scheduled to open mid-2014.

Performing Arts Center

A new performing arts center designed by Frank Gehry will bring culture into the mix of Lower Manhattan. It will become the permanent home for the Joyce Theater, a modern dance company, and will also host the Tribeca Film Festival. The project is still in the planning stages but is said to include a 1,000-seat performing arts center and a second stage, rehearsal space, classrooms, and a cafe. Construction has been delayed due to lack of funding, but in October 2010, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation board voted to allocate $100 million to develop the performing arts center.

Memorial Plaza

At the center of the site, an 8-acre park has been designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker. Two reflection pools with cascading waterfalls have been sunk within the original footprints of the two former World Trade Center towers. Bronze parapets will be inscribed with the names of victims of the attacks. Over 150 of 400 Swamp White Oak trees have already been planted along the plaza, which will also feature grasses and mosses, flowering ground covers, and cobblestone pavers. The plaza will open on September 11, 2011 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

9/11 Memorial Museum

A metal and glass-clad entry pavilion on the plaza designed by Snøhetta will lead visitors to the 9/11 Memorial Museum below grade, and the pavilion will also showcase the “tridents,” two large steel columns salvaged from the original World Trade Center towers. Steel installation for the pavilion is complete and cladding is in progress. The 9/11 Memorial Museum itself is situated among the former foundations of the twin towers, and visitors will make the descent from plaza level all the way down to bedrock. Steven Davis, FAIA, Partner, Davis Brody Bond Aedas – the firm that designed the 9/11 Memorial Museum – explains the sequence and design process:

People will engage the site from different perspectives, both emotionally and physically. Some will come for a pilgrimage; others will come for a brief lunch break from work. The sloping procession begins at the plaza, and visitors arrive in Memorial Hall, which is essentially an information and orientation space. At this point, you haven’t yet engaged with the enormous scale of the Museum, which is then revealed at the West Overlook and the first siting of the slurry wall. You see the slurry wall from a distance, and you’re not really sure what it is, and then it strikes you that this is where it all took place. [Also located in this space is the “Last Column" from the twin towers, which was covered in tributes from workers, rescuers, and family members of victims.]

Next, you proceed along from the West Chamber down the ramp to the East Overlook, at which point you are suspended 25 feet in the air between where the two towers stood. Then you descend by stair or escalator down to bedrock. The major exhibits will be located within the towers’ footprints. Experiencing this whole sequence could take 15 minutes or less, but more likely, an in-depth visit could take a couple of hours. When it’s time to leave, you ascend to Memorial Hall on an escalator. We’ve consciously separated visitors who have experienced the Museum from those who have not yet experienced it.

The concept for the spatial consequence of the Museum is based on the fact that we have not intervened in terms of the scale or the authenticity of the spaces. We inherited a series of program elements for this project: bedrock serves as the floor, the slurry wall defines the west enclosure, the Memorial Plaza is the roof, and the PATH station forms the east enclosure. We’ve done nothing to reduce the impact of the rawness of these spaces; in fact, we’ve tried to optimize the impression of scale. We don’t want to bias any of the events, and we don’t want to be overly influential in terms of emotion and context — we’re allowing it to reveal itself.

A traditional museum is an icon which houses exhibits, but this museum is the inverse — it is, in fact, an exhibit, which the icon. We learned a new way of thinking about museums and how to communicate and provide information. Interestingly, we are at the site of the atrocity, which is, of course, the most significant thing about the Memorial Museum; it is unlike the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, which are removed.

The construction of the below-grade Museum is quickly progressing, and it will open on the 11th anniversary of the attacks, September 11, 2012.