HGA Awarded $58 Million L.A. College Contract
MONTEREY PARK, Calif. — HGA Architects and Engineers was awarded the contract to design a new $58 million Student Success Center at East Los Angeles College through a design-build competition that the firm won.
The project, located in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park, totals 130,000 square feet and aims to achieve Net Zero Energy and LEED Gold certification.
“By utilizing the latest technology along with wind studies and day-lighting analysis, HGA’s team has created an ideal sustainable learning environment to help bring together the school’s diverse student body,” said James Matson, HGA’s principal-in-charge. “Thus, our design has not only created an interactive learning environment, we are seeking Net Zero Energy, which underscores one of our firm’s core beliefs of creating sustainable design.”
The building will accommodate nine school departments that were previously dispersed into one flexible learning environment aimed at encouraging student-faculty interaction while incorporating sustainable strategies, the firm reported.
The five-story building will include classrooms, offices, common areas and labs such as language, reading and writing. 
The structure allows for natural ventilation with nearly 70 percent of all classrooms and offices to be within 25 feet of operable windows, high-efficiency mechanical systems and lighting, and solar shading.
The center was designed using 3-D BIM technology, wind and daylight studies, and bio-mimicry, a design approach that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s patterns and strategies, the firm said.
Through the design-build process, HGA was able to incorporate Integrated Project Delivery, a growing trend in higher education that allows the firm to deliver projects better, faster and at a lower price by maximizing efficiency through all phases of design and construction, according to the firm.
Expected to be the heart of the campus, the structure will face a new quad that features bioswales and permeable paving.
An open-air, central court that connects the faculty office wing to the classroom wing also serves as the main entrance and vertical circulation spine, with a full-wall, painted graphic mural and brick pavers extending outward toward the campus quad, the firm said.
The building’s flexible classrooms allow re-arrangement of furniture for different learning options, with additional learning spaces and an exterior stepped terrace that can double as a gathering space or outdoor classroom.
The exterior design of the facility “reinterprets the campus’s existing brick architecture” through the use of multicolored black-out shades that add visual variety along the glass classroom wing, the firm said.
Pinner Construction is the general contractor for the design-build project. Consultants include Saiful/Bouquet, structural engineering, FBA Engineering, electrical and Fundament & Associates, mechanical engineering.