Project Walk-Through

USDA Arid-Land Research Center

Maricopa, Arizona | SmithGroup | Phoenix, Arizona

BY NORA BURBA TRULSSON

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL TIMMERMAN

A sweeping roof structure marks the facility's entrance, providing shade for a walkway and collecting rainwater for landscape irrigation.

Most people, including those who live in the area, view central Arizona as a decidedly urban setting, one giant Phoenix metroplex, sprawled across the desert clear to Tucson. But in fact, the core of the state, bisected by the Salt and Gila rivers, has long been an agricultural site, where crops as disparate as peaches and potatoes have flourished along with cotton and alfalfa.

SmithGroup of Phoenix dug into the state's agricultural heritage for the architectural firm's design of the new 99,431-square-foot, $20.3 million USDA Arid-Land Research Center, a state-of-the-art research facility built on the outskirts of Phoenix.

"For the design, we thought about how a traditional ranch or farm would grow," explains Mark Kranz, AIA, project designer. "First you'd have a home base, then you'd build outbuildings designed for function, such as sheds and barns. Each component has a role in the functioning of the whole farm."

The path from concept and design to completed facility was a long one, complete with a twist. The concept was to move and consolidate two laboratories — the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory and the Western Cotton Research Laboratory — from their previous Phoenix locations to a rural locale, namely a 20-acre parcel on the grounds of the existing 2,100-acre University of Arizona Maricopa Agricultural Center near the town of Maricopa. The focus of that center's fields are cotton and alfalfa crops.

The purpose of the new facility was primarily to research cotton, exploring issues such as water conservation, irrigation, sustainability and pest control.

"We began programming in October 2000," explains Kranz, whose project team included SmithGroup principal Michael Medici, AIA; project manager V. Noel Bryan, AIA; project manager Stephen Smith, AIA; and interior designer Kai Ekbundit, IDA. "But when you do a federal project, there are a lot of checks and balances. It's a laborious process." Less than a year into the process, the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred. As the project was a government building, it then became subject to new security mandates. Nonetheless, the project moved forward.

Using the traditional farm structure influences, Kranz's design placed the most formal of the structures, the "home base" or, in this case, the reception and administration building, front and center on the site. Laboratories were sited behind the reception/administration building, and farther back are the greenhouses and the headhouse, or main greenhouse. The site plan is also a linear progression from clean to dirty functions of the research facility, Kranz points out. The reception and office buildings, linked by a shaded walkway, contain conferences and cafeteria space, library and a coffee bar. The large laboratory building serves as a transition, while the greenhouses and headhouse at the back are directly off the fields, where outdoor research is conducted.

The complex was designed as a series of structures influenced by traditional farm buildings.

Different materials were used to mark the buildings. The front administration and office buildings were done with a more substantial, formal palette that includes ground-faced concrete masonry units, aluminum composite panels and windows designed to capture views of fields and distant mountains. The laboratory building was built as a loadbearing, tilt-up concrete structure with interior beams and columns, while the laboratory's outbuildings, including the central plant, are pre-engineered metal structures. A series of metal canopies shades walkways and links the buildings together.

The rainwater cistern and the roof structure shade courtyards adjacent to the cafeteria and conference center.

Inside, terrazzo was used as flooring for the lobby and cafeteria; the lobby's reception area is marked with the sculptural form of a recycled cotton-gin hopper and an apple-green wall. Laboratory spaces were done with rugged materials such as antimicrobial epoxy flooring and washable acoustical ceiling tile that stand up to harsh chemicals and biological materials.

An old cotton gin hopper is a focal point at the reception desk.

As sustainability and water conservation are at the core of the facility's existence, Kranz points out, the design included many green elements. At the entry, a cantilevered, asymmetrical butterfly roof floats above the administration building, serving not only as the facility's signature design element and as a shade structure, but also as part of a rainwater-harvesting strategy. Rainwater collected by the roof is stored in an elevated, 10,000-gallon stainless-steel cistern that marks the laboratory building entrance. "Actually, all of the building roofs collect rainwater," says Kranz. "Internal gutters collect the runoff into a piping system used to water the landscape plants."

A 10,000-gallon stainless-steel cistern collects rainwater from the roof. The water flows to a channel in the courtyard seating wall where it is distributed throughout the landscape via concrete irrigation channels.

Additional eco-friendly design elements include daylighting, night setback devices that reduce air-conditioning demand in the evenings, shading for windows, and a laboratory exhaust system that incorporates heat-recovering coils to capture energy in the exhaust air and return it to the lab building.

The south face of the administration building is recessed to reveal its steel frame.

SmithGroup made sure that the facility functioned well for research, calling in team members Victor Cardona, AIA, and Richard Rom to do the laboratory programming so that the center had everything from spaces for incubators and refrigerators for soil samples to an insectory ("basically, a bug farm inside the farm," Kranz explains).

Most important, the building's design fosters dialogue and collaboration among its 120 occupants, points out Kranz. "We have a lot of areas throughout the center where people can come together, be it having coffee in the courtyard or moving between the open-lab environments," he says. "We want there to be a cross-pollination of ideas."

Completed in January 2006, the project has also been fruitful, so to speak, for SmithGroup when it comes to design awards. It won Citation awards in both the Western Mountain Region and Arizona AIA design competitions, an Honor Award from the Arizona Masonry Guild, and several other awards. (For more on the Western Mountain Region AIA awards, see the article in this issue.)

Xeriscape gardens are planted between buildings in rows like the adjacent fields of cotton.

Architecture and interior design: SmithGroup Inc., Phoenix, AZ; (602) 265-2200 or www.smithgroup.com.

Landscape architecture: E Group, Phoenix, AZ; (602) 462-9000 or www.egroupinc.com.

Builder: CORE Construction, Phoenix, AZ; (602) 494-0800 or www.coreconstruct.com.