The General Classroom Building (GCB) at Colorado State University Pueblo was completed in the fall of 2015 and achieved LEED Platinum certification. The new three-story, 45,000 GSF building includes a variety of sizes and types of classrooms designed to encourage an active learning process, as well as faculty and staff support offices and conferencing space for the general educational program delivery. The building also includes student oriented break out and small group meeting spaces and workrooms. The GCB is initially home to many of the general education first and second year departmental courses taken by most students, reinforcing the initial impressions and educational experience of the University. A primary goal of the Ownership Design Committee was to create a “Great Student Experience” for these new college students.
The first two floors of the building are student oriented and offer a variety of types of classrooms that include two large, 135-person, tiered lecture auditoriums; two tiered 75-seat lecture classrooms; four 50-seat classrooms and computer labs, as well as student meeting spaces. The third floor is mostly dedicated to general faculty offices, the CHASS program Dean’s suite, and a new Resource Development Center that’s focus is to train new teachers in innovative learning methodologies.
The GCB is the first building to be located to the west of the primary campus academic spine, or ‘paseo’, and another primary goal was to assure that the siting and design of the new building was integrated into the rest of campus to avoid feeling isolated from the main campus spine. This building location is the first anchor on a planned east-west paseo development identified in the campus master plan, which will become the west campus entrance point. The new building encourages pedestrian traffic from the south and west parking spaces, from the north residence halls, and from the campus paseo to walk through the building to their final destination in order to optimize the student centered experience.
The project was delivered using Design/Build.
Certified LEED NC 2009 – Platinum
