AIA San Diego Design Awards
Last Thursday, October 30th was the AIA San Diego Design Awards, where Carrier Johnson + CULTURE earned an award for our work on the Tidewater Community College Joint-Use Library. Located in Virginia Beach, VA, “Tidewater” is 120,000 square feet library that was completed in the fall of 2013 and achieved a LEED rating of NC Gold. The project scope for Tidewater included: Programming, Architecture, Interior Design, and Graphic Communication. The client for the project was Tidewater Community College, Virginia Beach Campus and the City of Virginia Beach.
The first joint-library of its size in the region, the Learning Resources Center for the Tidewater Community College District and City of Virginia Beach is a center of academic distinction and sustainable integrity. The highly technical library houses spaces for computer labs, interactive labs, study spaces, display areas, meeting rooms, a café, staff work spaces, and designated areas for children and teens. Key to the design is the library’s connection between the organic forms of nature and the vibrancy of technology. The building’s design responds to its unique site on an abandoned agriculture field, where linear drainage ditches left a system of hedgerows. The building mimics this figuration with linear bands that run through the space and maximize the quiet areas of shadow and ambient light created by the garden hedges.