SCUP Excellence in Planning for a District or Campus Component, Merit Award

Cabrillo College for the Visual and Performing Arts Village with HGA Architects and Engineers

Photography by Loren Ahles

Cabrillo College developed a master plan to map improvements and create a home and identity for arts education in the campus community and the region.

The new precinct is sited on gently rolling land that contained a parking lot, a preserved bridge and remnants of a coastal cedar ravine. The 126,000 sf Arts Village forms a new lower eight-acre precinct. The physical result knit together two precincts and conveyed a new image near the heart of campus.

The jury said, “ . . . unusually high-quality architecture . . . so simple . . . it is a very good example . . .”

The village gathers programs for theater, music, art history and visual arts into a group of five buildings that are economically tailored structures that edge connected open courtyards.

The architecture has a hierarchy of forms, spaces, materials and details that modulate the scale and create quiet, elegant places that will mature with use. There is a conscious effort to create a place of quiet dignity, longevity and adaptability.

Economic pressures influenced design, resulting in efficient circulation, simple honest materials, lean durable finishes and lobbies sized and used for outdoor covered space. The village was completed in 2009 at a cost of $48 million.

Three new courtyards were created by the art, music and theater structures, giving each discipline a human scaled outdoor space. These spaces were left open and neutral to accommodate outdoor performances and exhibitions.

The plan preserves the ravine and cedar grove at the center of the new village and the bridge remains on a viable campus pathway, connecting the new precinct to its past.

Seventy-five percent of enrollment is part-time students, so connections with the community extend into the evening and weekends. This plan is more about framing a neighborhood and creating identity than making a building.

“The project has risen to the challenge of validating a half century commitment by Cabrillo to providing quality instruction in the visual and performing arts. The complex will stand for decades as a beacon for those interested in the arts and the architectural impact on the campus and community will stand the test of time,” says Dan Martinez, Dean, Visual, Applied and Performing Arts at Cabrillo College.

Project Team: Cabrillo College with HGA Architects and Engineers; also Auerbach Pollock Friedlander; Arup Acoustics; Bogard+Kitchell