California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, William and Linda Frost Center for Research and Innovation

2024 Design Awards Honor Recipient

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, William and Linda Frost Center for Research and Innovation

As the first interdisciplinary building at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the Frost Center unites three colleges under one roof. The new building houses classrooms, labs, and faculty office space for the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Science and Mathematics, and the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Sciences. The Frost Center represents the future of classroom and laboratory design: open, inviting, and flexible enough to support education priorities for a growing and diverse undergraduate student body.

The architecture is defined by brick, metal, and glass, and complemented by a rhythmic repetition of perforated fins. From the outside, the massing creates a scale of smaller, interconnected buildings as opposed to a large, singular building. The exterior materiality flows into the interior architecture, establishing a continuity that deepens the link between the building’s indoor and outdoor environments. The central atrium defines the interior environment and is lined on all sides by flexible tech-enabled classrooms, collaboration and study spaces, laboratories, and offices. Angular, layered, and visually dynamic, the architecture of the atrium offers sightlines and physical paths of connection that unify the various research and teaching modules to create a sense of togetherness, engagement, and shared experiences.

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The very large, complicated program feels humane– an incredible solution. The simplicity of the exterior is a balancing point for the geometry of the massing, and it provides for a richness of interior space.

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Measure 1: Design for Integration

To integrate the Frost Center into the undeveloped site, the massing concept is reminiscent of an Italian hill town with individual interconnected tower blocks responding to the site topography and existing buildings. This accommodates large programmatic elements while being respectful of the surrounding campus scale, resulting in a more contextual and accessible building than comparable laboratories of this scale.

Creating a healthy, operationally efficient indoor environment was prioritized. This includes healthy indoor air quality, energy and embodied carbon reduction, and enhanced user comfort. A strategy that lowers the building’s energy usage, supports user comfort, and defines the building’s architectural expression are the exterior fins. This shading strategy features vertical and horizontal fins engineered to make floor-to-ceiling windows in the laboratories possible without excessive glare or heat gain. Attuned to specific solar orientations that optimize daylight and energy efficiency, the fins enhance occupant comfort by allowing natural light to penetrate deeply into the building and are calibrated to maximize views.
Designed to achieve LEED Gold® certification, the building consumes 30% less potable water than current California efficiency standards, exceeds current Title 24 standards by 20%, and is designed to accommodate future rooftop solar panels.

Measure 2: Design for Equitable Communities

With the teaching kitchen, computer lab, expressive technology studio, lecture hall, and classrooms that pour into the first-floor atrium, this building is designed to accommodate a range of communities—from elementary and high school students who are brought in for STEM educational programs, to adult education programs for foods sciences and liberal arts.

Measure 3: Design for Ecosystems

To establish outdoor environments that mutually benefit human and non-human inhabitants, the landscaping is designed to provide a diversity of native and adaptive plants. With the vegetated site area reaching 25%, the landscape design also creates outdoor learning environments that are vibrant with local flora including pollinating and drought resistant species. To protect birds and reduce maintenance, an ornithologist was consulted to finely tune the façade to prevent swallows from nesting on the building. Additionally, the building is sited respectfully in context with one of the largest specimen eucalyptus trees in North America to avoid disrupting its root system.

Measure 4: Design for Water

This project achieves significant water reductions through water management strategies that address both indoor and outdoor water use. A robust stormwater detention system captures rainwater utilizing detention basins surrounding the building site, with gravity fed wells to introduce rainfall back into the subterrain ground water. Coupled with the selection of native and drought tolerant plants, there is a 50% reduction in outdoor water use. Water saving fixtures in the toilets and labs contribute to the building consuming 30% less potable water than current California efficiency standards.

Measure 5: Design for Economy

With three colleges moving in, the design team performed analyses on program requirements across the departments to identify overlaps. This allowed the team to avoid redundancies, while ensuring adequate space types and equipment were provided. The building features a high efficiency ratio at 71% due to the large amount of usable collaboration space outside the laboratories and classrooms. Lecture halls and classrooms are also designed to accommodate multiple layouts to suit different styles of lecturing and learning, which means only one venue is needed to accommodate the three colleges and produce different experiences.

Measure 6: Design for Energy

Laboratories typically have high EUI benchmarks due to equipment, so the team targeted equipment efficiency to reduce the overall EUI. Other strategies to reduce energy demand include lighting power reductions made possible by the exterior fins, demand-controlled ventilation fume hoods and active chilled beams in the laboratories, radiant slabs on the ground floor, and atrium ventilation through stack effect. This strategy eliminated the need for a ducted return or exhaust system at the ground level and the need to actively ventilate or condition circulation areas on upper levels. The result is an EUI that’s 54% below the baseline.

Measure 7: Design for Well-Being

The façade shading strategy features vertical and horizontal fins designed to make floor-to-ceiling windows in the laboratories possible without solar glare or heat gain. Based on parametric modeling studies, the fin orientation and size optimize daylight and energy efficiency. This improves occupant comfort while maximizing the views towards the hills of San Luis Obispo. Passive design strategies and natural ventilation ensure the building is as healthy as possible for occupants. One hundred percent outside air from air handling units and operable windows in offices avoids the recirculation of air that might provide an avenue for airborne pathogen exposure.

Measure 8: Design for Resources

The Frost Center demonstrates design for resources through material specification and waste management. All wood is sustainably sourced from Forestry Certified wood and all masonry was regionally sourced in California. The team also procured 62 materials that have health product declarations, and 50 materials with environmental product declarations that disclose embodied carbon impact. Low emitting materials were also sourced when possible. In support of the circular economy, 50% of construction and demolition waste was diverted from the landfill and recycled materials were specified when possible, accounting for 23% of the materials in the building.

Measure 9: Design for Change

Useability and functionality over time is ensured by addressing risks and vulnerabilities, providing passive survivability, and designing for flexibility. Risk assessments evaluated climate risks, which revealed future climate conditions could require more active cooling, so additional cooling infrastructure was integrated. For passive survivability, a backup generator will provide energy, while passive ventilation makes the building habitable if the generator is interrupted. To ensure functionality over time, laboratories were modularly planned to provide flexibility for future modifications. The planning modules can be combined to produce large, open laboratories or subdivided for small instrument or special-use without structural or mechanical intervention.

Measure 10: Design for Discovery

By creating transparent, open, flexible environments, the University has witnessed novel new uses of the space that no one foresaw. For example, the teaching kitchen features large sliding glass doors that open into the atrium pre-function space on the ground floor. Above these large sliding doors are 12’ tall clerestory glazing zones that feature projection walls behind that were originally envisioned to host a revolving slide deck of departmental news and announcements. One faculty member projected their lecture onto these projection surfaces, opened the glass sliders and had their entire class spill out into the atrium.