Engineering VI Building

Dan J on April 30, 2023

Prominently located on UCLA’s Westwood Plaza, the design of the Engineering VI building responds to multiple scales, frames a new campus gateway, creates a new face for the School of Engineering, and establishes a homebase for the engineering school’s growing alumni community. The 150,000 square foot building provides a dynamic complement of multidisciplinary research environments and has been called the “crown jewel” of the engineering school. The design emerged from a transformational district planning study that reimagined a former service entry to become the campus’s principal gateway.

MRY developed the “two-phase, one-building” strategy during the conceptual planning phase to flexibly accommodate project funding and evolving research priorities. Phase 1 provided much-needed wet lab research space, while Phase 2 serves the increasingly important presence of computer engineering and establishes an official home for the Department of Computer Science. The planning of the two phases was carefully sequenced to create a complimentary whole. Phase 1 provided the critical building infrastructure, while Phase 2 completes the facility with a rich complement of shared interactive gathering spaces organized around a multi-story lobby and garden court. The second phase also includes the addition of new alumni spaces, multipurpose classrooms, and a 250-seat multi-modal auditorium.

School of Continuing Education Village

Dan J on April 29, 2023

This new Village creates a visible home base and strong presence for the School of Continuing Education on the Mt. SAC community college campus in Walnut, California. A hub for non-credit education focused on workforce development and personal betterment, the impact of this transformational project extends well beyond the campus, to the community and greater region.

The Village anchors a new pedestrian campus connector, the Village Walk, and creates a new campus gateway. The modestly scaled buildings mediate the significant grade change from campus to community, while the dynamic, expressive folded roofs and transparent facades engage the landscapes to create lively and shaded exterior spaces around the building.

The project supports a diverse student body with a wide variety of expectations and needs. Extensive transparency throughout creates dynamic naturally lit environments supporting a range of learning styles, while encouraging interaction with education on display.

The Village established Mt. SAC’s first Sustainable Design Charette process that will be used for all future projects. It also dramatically expands the existing campus framework to provide new pedestrian connectors, and access to future development sites, while extending campus infrastructure to support future campus expansion.

Bloch Hall for Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Dan J on April 29, 2023

Early on, a quote from the late Dean Teng Kee-Tan “the path of innovation is never a straight line” inspired the design of this building to serve the entrepreneurship and innovation studies at the University of Missouri’s Kansas City campus. The building was thus designed to feature curvature and flow, orchestrating a visual openness that connects people, spaces, and active experiences. Movement throughout the central, multi-level atrium provides surprise and discovery and reveals adaptable, experiential learning environments. The result is a building that ultimately operates more like a design school than a business school.

The new 68,000 square foot building includes a 200-seat auditorium, multiple flexible learning classrooms, seminar rooms, a finance lab and faculty offices connected by an amphitheater that serves as an important gathering space for the entire school. The interiors are light-filled and bright reinforcing the spirit of optimism and innovation so important to the Dean’s vision.

An inclusive, participatory design process embodied the mission of the school and exemplified the types of creative exchanges envisioned to transpire within the new building. Workshops with students, faculty, staff, and campus leadership became a critical tool to build consensus within the framework of a 21-month fast-track, design-build schedule.

Back to Top