Just about everyone has had an experience with a portable classroom—a one-story, railroad-car-like box on stilts or cinder blocks. You enter via a small ramp with painted two-by-four railings that leads to a plain door. The interior is not unlike other buildings on the campus—drop-in ceilings, painted drywall partitions, inexpensive carpet, metal door frames. Sometimes, in a design flourish, there are wood doors.
Mark McVay
Many institution use such temporary classrooms to respond to a need for space, but nobody expects them to be around very long. Brought in to meet temporary needs, many of them nevertheless endure for 15 years or longer. When a number of them are in the same area, they can easily become a campus ghetto.
When student numbers were expected to increase as much as 50 percent by 2010, one solution that various University of California campuses explored was the surge building. A surge building is designed to be even more adaptable and flexible than portable classrooms or general academic buildings (which almost all campuses have). I’m not talking about stripping down an older campus building to its skeleton and renaming it “Temporary Overflow Building.” I’m referring to a building designed from the start to support growth, offer maximum flexibility, and most importantly, add to the cohesiveness of the campus.
The beauty of a structure like this is that an institution can use it to play musical chairs as the campus grows. The surge building is the empty chair that a college, department, or program can move into for the duration of a construction or renovation project. Or the surge building can accommodate unexpected growth in overall enrollment. Meanwhile, each department that moves into the building contributes creative ideas about using the public space around it. And the campus’s culture can thrive.
There are two keys to a surge building: speed and cost. The two surge buildings I’ve been involved with were constructed much more quickly, and much less expensively, than traditional buildings at their respective institutions. Interior finishes were handsome but generic. Exterior materials were compatible with materials on some of the neighboring campus structures, but less expensive to install. At the same time, there was a focus on some key element, such as an entry, a courtyard, or a particular large room. We sometimes call this the “80/20 rule”—20 percent of the building uses 80 percent of the money, while the rest of the building is as economical as it can be while still being durable.
To be economical, a surge building must find double and triple uses for most of its elements, and also last 30 to 50 years. For example, a building may use exterior walkways that also serve as sunshades. A stairway may double as an amphitheater. The entryways to office suites may create informal lounges. All of the building’s basic systems, meanwhile, are designed to adapt economically to change. The biggest bonus, though, comes when such a building creates permanent public space on the campus—pleasing public space, not a desolate alley between two trailers.
Lack of money, or inadequate vision on the part of administrators, can sometimes prevent surge buildings from contributing as much to campus life as their permanent neighbors. But if designed properly, a surge building will afford school administrators the ability to play musical chairs with growth for decades, while at the same time not diminishing the cohesiveness of the campus. —Mark McVay
Mark McVay, one of this month’s guest bloggers, is design director in the Los Angeles office of the architecture firm SmithGroup. You can read his previous posts here and here.
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