The goals of the Johnson County Community College Center for Sustainability, combined with the need for additional classrooms at the ever-expanding college, led to a unique opportunity to create inspired learning spaces which also serve as an information center for the campus and community at large. The program called for two “inspired” classroom spaces as well as a student lounge that would serve as a teaching tool for the college’s faculty to educate their own students about sustainable design.
JCCC’s strategic plan calls for the college to champion environmental sustainability in curriculum and in the college’s infrastructure, transforming the physical campus into a living learning laboratory. With these goals in mind Galileo’s Pavilion was designed to take advantage of the daily and seasonal cycles of nature to passively heat, cool and daylight the building as well as supply electricity and utility water. Sustainable strategies include material innovation, rainwater harvesting, living walls and green roof trays in addition to active systems such as photovoltaics and a wind turbine. Galileo’s Pavilion is expected to be Studio 804’s fifth LEED Platinum building.
Studio 804’s Galileo Pavilion is a collaboration with Johnson County Community College, located in Overland Park, KS. The new building is located in the heart of the campus, southwest of the Science Building, on an island of land which plays a pivotal role in the pedestrian traffic patterns on the south end of campus.
In visiting JCCC’s campus, Studio 804 saw an opportunity to juxtapose the new building next to the existing Galileo Garden, a sundial sculpture by Dale Eldred commemorating Galileo. There is a common intention with both the existing sculpture and the building design concept with the focus on the sun, the integration of science and nature, and the implementation of the entire campus as a classroom. The sculpture will be refurbished and reincorporated on the site with the building arranged around a courtyard, blending indoors and outdoors with visual connections between the spaces.