Wake Tech RTP Building One:
General Administration Classroom Building
Research Triangle Park, NC
Client
Size
Completion Date
Sustainability
Awards
Wake Tech Community College
109,000 square feet
2017
LEED Silver®
Merit Award, AIA Triangle, 2020 | Merit Award, AIA North Carolina, 2019
Architect
Our role
Perkins&Will
Kenneth Luker served as Design Principal during previous association with Perkins&Will.
All photographs © Mark Herboth Photography LLC unless otherwise indicated.
This General Administration and Classroom Building was the first construction on the new, 94-acre Research Triangle Park (RTP) Campus for Wake Tech Community College and defined the character and direction of future campus growth. The design employes essential elements of the American collegiate tradition to create a ‘campus in one’ building with spaces designed and organized to connect students to one another and to encourage a shared sense of place.
The three-story building hosts an expansive program of classrooms, faculty offices, student dining, library, auditorium, and administrative suites surround a three-sided campus quad. This central quad will expand over time as the organizing focus of an eleven-building campus serving 7,000 students. Surrounding the quad is a circulation path defined by multistory glass and gracious, daylit stairways at the building entrances. Both features make student activity highly visible and present opportunities for changing views of campus.
Flexible interior spaces provide the campus population a variety of locations to work and socialize. Wood accented interiors, covered outdoor dining, and shade trees create a sense of warmth and comfort for students and faculty.
As the first of many buildings to come on the campus, the design anticipates change when day-one programs – library, dining, student services – eventually move to future buildings on campus. The 30x30 structural grid supports adaptation to future classrooms or other standard academic programs. Also included in the design is a regional plant to supply chilled water and steam to this and the following two buildings, eventually connecting to a future central plant as the campus grows.
