Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management

Trellised outdoor circulation	Building courtyard	Rooftop photovoltaic panels
Student workroom and lounge	Auditorium interior	Building interpretive display
Small office with operable window	Operable transom at office doorway	Occupancy sensor in small office
Ceiling mounted sensor in shared space for lighting modulation	Furnishing for social use in building courtyard	Sensor-controlled lighting in public hallway
Mechanical room	Mechanical room

Courtyard Panorama Pan by Dragging - Zoom in with Shift key - Zoom out with Control key Requires QuickTime.

The Donald Bren School at the University of California, Santa Barbara takes advantage of a beautiful setting near the Pacific Ocean to become a green building that embraces its environment not only for efficiency, but for experience. With a striking open courtyard, it provides ample opportunity for social interaction that makes the transition between indoors and outdoors much smoother and ephemeral than most buildings.

The Bren School also utilizes daylighting to harness natural illumination in lieu of artificial lights while allowing views that further enhance the buildingšs connection to the landscape. And with operal windows and high-tech senors connected to adjacent heating units, the Bren School smartly takes advantage of Santa Barbarašs famously moderate climate. Itšs a campus building as charming and memorable as the city to which it belongs.

Building Bren Hall with sustainable materials and methods is estimated to have added only 2% to the building cost, which will easily be offset over time by energy savings.

"To ensure efficient use of energy, the building was designed to harvest natural light, heating, and cooling. Facing the ocean, the office wing has no air conditioning and instead relies on flow-through ventilation with operable windows and transoms. Daylight harvesting is coupled with a lighting plan that incorporates energy-efficient fixtures and bulbs along with controls for motion and ambient light."
— Donald Bren School

"LEED was instrumental in providing structure for the research effort as well as a means to measure results."
— Design team, quoted at USGBC LEED certification report

Details

LEED Certified Platinum

Four stories, 84,672 total gross square feet
25,246 square feet of classrooms, offices, and conference rooms
21,058 square feet of laboratory space
2.9 acre site area
Nominal occupancy, 239 people

Total construction cost of $26 million

Address: UCSB campus, Santa Barbara, California
4670 Physical Sciences North, Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Design Team

Architect	Zimmer Gunsul Frasca
Mechanical Engineer	Flak & Kurtz

"LEED Platinum at UCSB", by ArchitectureWeek, ArchitectureWeek No. 150, 2003.0611, p1.

Search the RIBA architecture library catalog for more references on Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management
 

Donald Bren School — at Archiplanet

About Donald Bren Hall — at the school's own web site

Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management — at the architect's web site

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