High Country Home for the Sciences
Highlands University Getting New Science Center
K. Robert Wendel

The $10 million state-of-the-art science center at the Officials at the Las Vegas, N.M., campus of New Mexico Highlands University should be open by December, offering the sciences to more students and reaching out to the community.

Crews from Las Vegas, N.M.-based Franken Construction recently buttoned up the new Highlands Science Center, with crews from Albuquerque-based Les Files Drywall rapidly working through the building.

"It's going to be quite a building for the university," said Phillip Martinez, a Franken Construction project manager. "It's going to make a difference in this town and it is going to be a real boost for the sciences."

Work on the 70,000-sq.-ft. project started in summer 2002 with the demolition of an old car dealership.

advertisement

The site was small, steep and rocky. Before work could start, crews from Rocky Road Gravel Products had to excavate more than 20,000 cu. yds. of rock, right in the heart of the city. Crews used a track hoe with a hammer as well as a D-9 Caterpillar.

"There's a lot of what we call 'greenhorn limestone,' and boy was it hard," said Oren Mathews, a principal with Las Vegas, N.M.-based Rocky Road Gravel Products. "It's one of the tougher sites I have worked on, and I have been in the business for 20 years."

Sitting on a slab-on-grade foundation, the science center employs a variety of building systems, including concrete retaining walls and a steel skeleton. Lubbock, Texas-based W & W Steel and Albuquerque's Hughes & Associates erected more than 400 tons of steel.

Designers worked with the steep site, which drops 30- ft. from the top grade to the bottom grade, to create an open and inviting front entrance that faces out to the community.

"We selected a prominent site on the campus and are extending it out to the public to generate more interest in the sciences," said Steve Perich, a principal with Albuquerque's Dekker/Perich/Sabatini, which teamed with St. Louis-based Cannon Design to design the laboratories. "Traditionally, in this area, there aren't a lot of students that go into math or science, so we are trying to be sensitive to the context of the campus and make this an open and welcoming building."

Flexibility was also a key issue for both the school and designers. Much of the three-story building features science research labs and teaching labs, as well as offices, conference rooms and a small observatory on the roof.

Designers incorporated large windows in the classrooms and labs throughout the building to create more day lighting to give the labs a more open and inviting feeling.

"We built the laboratories so they could be converted from a teaching use to a research use and then back again," said Cannon Design architect Tom Harvath. "The idea is to get undergraduates involved in research activities directed by faculty members to learn in a more hands-on way, instead of doing rote experiments."

The project features a complex mechanical and electrical system, with acid piping and stainless steel ducting throughout the building. Hays Plumbing and Heating of Las Vegas, N.M. acted as the mechanical contractor.

Depending on the success of the University's outreach efforts, designers created a plan that would allow the University to expand the science center at a later date.