The grow­ing demand for com­put­er and man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­o­gy, art and archi­tec­ture were the dri­ving force behind the Art, Sci­ence, and Tech­nol­o­gy Pavil­ion on the Ray Harstein Cam­pus of Oak­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege (OCC). The design team was chal­lenged with co-locat­ing exist­ing and new pro­grams under one roof while pro­vid­ing a unique iden­ti­ty for each. 

The one-build­ing cam­pus near­ly dou­bled with the addi­tion and com­pletes an inte­ri­or ​“street” that ties old and new togeth­er. A cen­tral ​“piaz­za” sits at the inter­sec­tion of these two ​“streets” to form the spir­i­tu­al heart of campus. 

The tech­nol­o­gy hub con­tains an ELT Lab, Cis­co Lab, LAN Lab, Engi­neer­ing Design Class­rooms, CNC Lab, Manufacturing/​Automation Lab, Archi­tec­ture Stu­dio, Paint­ing and Draw­ing Stu­dio and a Graph­ic Design Lab.

With a grant from the State of Illi­nois, numer­ous sus­tain­abil­i­ty strate­gies were lever­aged, includ­ing a raised access floor sys­tem for air dis­tri­b­u­tion, nat­ur­al light in lab­o­ra­to­ries to off­set arti­fi­cial light­ing, and on-site storm water retention. 

Client: Oak­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege
Pro­gram: Addi­tion to a one build­ing cam­pus, co-locat­ing exist­ing and new pro­grams
Size: 59,533 sqft
Cost: $10,550,000

Select­ed Awards/​Honors:
Frank Lloyd Wright Hon­or Award, Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects Illi­nois, 2009.
Dis­tin­guished Build­ing, Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects Chica­go. 2008.
Mer­it Award, Chica­go Build­ing Con­gress. 2008.

Col­lab­o­ra­tive Part­ners:
Gewalt Hamil­ton Asso­ciates (Civ­il Engi­neer)
Grum­man Butkus Asso­ciates (Mechan­i­cal, Elec­tri­cal & Plumb­ing, Fire Pro­tec­tion Engi­neer)
Matrix Engi­neer­ing (Struc­tur­al Engineer)

Pho­tog­ra­phy Cred­it: © Steve Hall, Hedrich Blessing