Rives Taylor: A 3-Step Approach to Programming Your New Building

For a new campus facility to break new ground—both educationally and sustainably—the initial program must be visionary. I see advantages when programming occurs in three fast-paced, but sequential, phases. First, tackle the development program, then the core-and-shell program, and finally the interior. Dividing the process this way helps to focus the sustainability discussion at the optimum point in the process.

The development program lets you get your arms around the full scope of a capital project with an eye on measurable life cycle costs. (It’s important at this stage to take into account the operating budget for the building and the facility department’s ability to run and maintain it.) So you might ask: “How big? What cost per square foot?” At this point, you should also study site implications, infrastructure issues, and the impact on existing facilities. You might also consider the objectives of classroom technology, the need for gathering spaces, and other unique scope definers on a macro scale. This phase determines the building’s spatial budget, scale, and total cost allowance, while bearing in mind the long-term implications for energy efficient design and operation.

Next comes the core-and-shell program. Great advantages can be gained by isolating the shell as a separate programming exercise in the academic environment. By identifying how big the shell can be—and no bigger—you place firm limits on the user groups, who will invariably lobby for more space. Bottom line: you only build, operate, and consume resources for space that is highly utilized.

This is when you should concentrate on the LEED rating, while being mindful of the fact that LEED criteria don’t often dovetail with the project’s broader performance goals. Develop a “performance map” to help campus stakeholders articulate their goals. Part of this process is to agree on how desired outcomes will be measured—whether by supporting the university mission, advancing its 100-year plan, or improving its learning metrics. Consider, for example, that healthy buildings enhance human performance, whether that means a professor doing research or a student trying to learn. 

Last, attack the interior program. This is the time to iron out the fine details, such as the size of offices and who is located next to whom. The advantage is that the triple-tiered programming process already has set the big-picture scope. It has defined the envelope for space and budget, allowing for effective space planning within a high-performance shell. It’s akin to a Class A, spec-office approach: designing an efficient, long-lasting shell that can adapt to changing interior functions.

Ultimately, by maximizing the sustainability/performance quotient, the college comes out the winner—along with students and faculty and staff members. Healthy settings usually mean a more efficient building, one that costs less to operate and manage. But small gains in productivity can have a much greater financial impact. For example, a one-percent gain in productivity provides an annual payback of about $3 per square foot—about 600 percent of the cost savings generated by a typical set of building-energy-efficiency measure. These numbers can mean a lot for any college.

Rives Taylor, an autumn Buildings & Grounds guest blogger, designs higher-education facilities at Gensler and leads the firm’s sustainability task force. He was previously the university architect at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and he continues to teach sustainable-design methodology at the University of Houston and Rice University. You can read his previous posts here.