Champ Cooper School Additions Phase 1

The Champ Cooper School Classroom building is a 22,060 sq. ft. one-story building that is the first of three phases to the school campus. The building consists of two separate hubs with five classrooms within each hub, totaling ten classrooms. Each hub has an interior shared project collaboration space and an exterior shared collaboration space. The primary objective of the design of both the interior and exterior collaboration spaces is to promote additional learning opportunities and enhance and enrich the educational needs of middle school students by providing space for experiments or activities. Additionally, the building contains a dining commons area with a serving kitchen, a special education classroom, two teacher work rooms, a reception area, and two offices for administrative staff. The building was designed for natural light to be incorporated into each space, which allows students to access daylight to improve and positively contribute to the student’s academic performance.

Covington High School Classroom Building Expansion

The project scope includes a significant addition to the high school campus with 70,000 sq. ft. of new classroom space on two floors. The new addition replaces 28 existing modular classroom buildings and creates a new eastern campus edge contiguous to the original 1970’s main classroom building. At the point of connection to the existing building, a new two-story commons allows space for student gathering. The north end of the addition is anchored by a new music and band facility that allows the entire high school band to rehearse as one, along with adequate storage space for all of their band equipment. The exterior design relates to the existing campus vernacular through the use of a light tan modular brick veneer and corrugated metal wall panels. East and western façade openings are shaded with terracotta baguette louver systems.

Nunez Community College Student Testing and Career Counseling Center

Nunez Community College, aiming to establish a bold new identity and a student-centered welcoming facility, has developed a comprehensive building program that includes career counseling, testing services, meeting and training spaces, and a café. The design had to navigate several site constraints, such as a live oak tree grove, existing structures, a drive-thru café, and flood elevation requirements. The building’s exterior utilizes brick and metal, aligning with the existing campus architecture, while the interior design features an industrial aesthetic, with added wood elements in more intimate spaces, reflecting the core curriculum focus on industrial training.

The career counseling area is positioned to offer expansive views of the live oak grove and interfaces with the main circulation spine, featuring booths open on both sides. This design combines intimacy and transparency, enhancing the industrial aesthetic with the warmth of wood. The café and multipurpose meeting room are located on the community-facing side of the building, while counseling and other student activities face the campus, integrating with the broader student environment.

A high-volume circulation spine with clerestory windows floods the interior with natural light, and perforated and corrugated metal create a transparent veil over the outdoor café lounge and student entry, reinforcing the industrial theme. The site planning connects the new facility to the administration building, preserves the live oak grove, and accommodates the drive-thru café, ensuring integration with existing campus facilities. This design not only meets the functional needs of the college but also creates a vibrant, inviting space that reflects the industrial training emphasis of the institution while maintaining a connection with nature and existing campus elements.

Mandeville High School Classroom Building and Gymnasium Addition

This new three-story classroom building nestled in Mandeville High School’s campus provides 38 classrooms (12 reduced number/special education classrooms, 26 regular classrooms and support spaces) that replaced 32 existing modular classrooms with a permanent building. The façade of this new building, while appearing random, is in fact a twist on the Fibonacci Sequence and will be used as a teaching tool in the classroom. In addition to the new classroom building, existing locker rooms were renovated and the addition of a new wrestling practice facility cradles the outdoor collaboration courtyard.

Southeastern Louisiana University Science and Technology Building

It is the designer’s belief that it is a requirement today to develop educational places that address 21st Century needs in an academic community-based environment. Such an environment should completely support and allow work, play & study within a learning community.

After Hurricane Katrina, came a diaspora of faculty from various institutions in New Orleans, many of which landed at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana, one of the first stops north out of New Orleans. The Southeastern Industrial Technology Department was the beneficiary of many of these faculty. With the University’s vision, the conceptualization of a new facility was developed to address the needs of the 21st Century. The department’s mission is to “Support the economic development of the region by providing a premier, industry-relevant, undergraduate education, rich in real-world-ready experiences, undergraduate research, and a mixture of theoretical and hands-on coursework.”.

In the past, the University prided itself in the student career placement within the industry as ready to work. They recently joined a consortium of higher educational institutions that will supply work-ready individuals to the 2nd largest economic development announcement made in 2017, nationally. DXC Technology, Inc., one of the largest digital transformation companies in today’s world, has committed to the region the development of a center for digital transformation that will produce 2,000 jobs by 2025. This building and its products will feed this need.

The building designers collaborated with the building’s users and developed specific approaches to address the building’s purpose. The building itself was used as a teaching tool, where the building systems were exposed so that participants can experience and use these systems as examples. Laboratories spaces are transparent to exhibit to students’ work efforts, and students can see the on-going educational energy. Finally, the building addresses the 21st-century need of providing informal social spaces where students and faculty can collaborate in a community atmosphere for discussion and idea-making.

In addition to the specifics of this cutting-edge building’s internal working, the placement of this facility located on the extreme southeast edge of the campus anchors the edge of the campus. It offers an image of progress while relating to the historic core of the campus in a contemporary fashion.

The building consists of high bay laboratory spaces on the first floor, smaller labs, classrooms, and computer labs on the second floor, and faculty offices, research labs, and the department suite on the third floor. Many sustainable strategies have been integrated into the site design. Built-in controls for building operations have reduced energy consumption and cost.

Additionally, an apparatus was installed at the west facade of the building that serves a dual purpose. It is a west-facing shading scrim and veils a research-focused roof deck on the third floor. The scrim’s grid framework allows for the attachment of instruments such as wind turbines, solar photovoltaic panels, and various types of robotics-based research equipment for experimentation purposes.

Loyola Monroe Hall

The existing building was a 1970’s original (5) story construction, which housed the majority of Loyola’s classroom space within 170,000 sq. ft. The building’s program required a consolidation of the Math, Sciences, Performing, and Visual Arts to create a more collaborative learning environment. As a result, the spatial demand required an additional 100,000 sq. ft. of building area to be added to the existing footprint. Due to site constraints, the building was expanded vertically to include (2) additional floors and a roof-top utility penthouse and greenhouse.

The project scope’s complexity included a renovation of all existing floors from top to bottom, which involved a complete replacement of all mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and special systems. All new vertical transportation and egress were provided, including total replacement of the exterior façade. The building was renovated over a duration of (5) years while maintaining full occupancy throughout the demolition and construction for the Academic Schedule. This project was a joint venture between Holabird & Root and Holly & Smith Architects.

Northshore Technical Community College – Livingston Campus

Tangipahoa Parish Library

The new Tangipahoa Parish Library Headquarters is located in downtown Amite, La. along Central Avenue, next to the fire station. The building is two stories, comprising 19,948 sq. ft. Because the site is a long and narrow piece of property that spans across the entire block, the design uses this as an opportunity to connect the downtown with the historic residential neighborhood facing N. Laurel St. The building sits close to the street on the downtown side. It allows for visitor parking in the rear. Although the primary entrance is located on the west side facing the railroad tracks, the building can also be entered from the east. At the western entry, visitors are greeted by an outdoor plaza, followed by a fenced-in children’s courtyard. A portion of the building extends out closer to the street on the northwest. This piece houses the public meeting room with a rooftop terrace above. Upon entering, the visitor is guided through the library along a main spinal circulation corridor extending through to the rear parking. All public library functions are located to the right while administration and library staff positioned along the left. This spinal circulation space is expressed in the building’s architecture and repeated on the second floor. This planning tool allows for clarity in way finding and simplicity in the organization of the library functions. The public library portion includes a large area for the children’s library, a multi-media and browsing area, a young adult area, fiction and non-fiction, and finally, a closed-off quiet area called the “living room.”

On the second floor, accessible via elevator or stair, is the local history/ genealogy area. This space is situated within a double-height volume, which over-looks down into the first-floor library spaces. There is a public use computer lab directly across from the local history area and access to the public-use roof terrace. The design utilizes daylighting strategies to harvest natural light, allowing the library to function with primarily natural lighting only for most of the day. Daylighting provides for a much greater energy savings and better quality of light for reading. Exterior materials are primarily brick with some use of standing seam metal wall panels in key locations. The new library is be a great asset for Tangipahoa Parish and an economic stimulus for downtown Amite.

Southeastern Louisiana University Kinesiology and Health Studies Building

The project consists of a 35,000 sq. ft. addition and renovation to the existing Kinesiology and Health Studies Building. The existing building, a late 1970’s modern design, posed significant problems in allowing for an addition. The design team developed a scheme that allowed for new entry and a new identity for the existing structure. The university desired the addition to speak to the predominate art deco language of the existing campus, but still blend with the current and speak to the future. Three lantern-like tower elements are located at the entries which reference the forms of the art deco vocabulary. The building is situated with its long faces oriented north-south to maximize solar control. Shading elements are deployed along the south facade, which will provide total shading for the office spaces within while allowing for maximum views into the historic live oaks which line the street. An Iconic landmark mansard structure houses the computer lab and relates to the existing building’s existing natatorium form. A breezeway and catwalk provide an outdoor plaza connection from existing to new.