While recreation and wellness centers seem like a mainstay on college campuses, it wasn’t too long ago that they were not. If you think back, the higher education experience has often been categorized into, and known for, academics and athletics. You had the really smart students and then you had the students that were on their way to the NBA or the NFL, or to play professional baseball. What the recreation center has done is fill-in the gap. It’s a place for students of all levels of academic and athletic abilities. It is the social place for student life on campus to not only participate in physical activity but to “see and be seen” by other students.

The Recreation and Wellness Center (RAW) at California State University East Bay in Hayward, Calif., is such an example. Its popularity rivals that of the campus library, and it’s become a huge recruiting tool because of its proximity to student housing.

Featuring a two-court gymnasium, a fitness center, multipurpose rooms and support areas, CSU East Bay’s Recreation and Wellness Center is a place for students to exercise, socialize, and burn off steam in between or after classes. The facility is master planned at about 56,000 square feet, with the ability to add an additional 22,000 square feet of multi-use space in the future.

The site itself is very interesting. Set in Northern California, we at LPA were aware of the area’s prospects for earthquakes and resulting structural challenges. At the same time, we found great gifts in the region’s climate. The sloping site is located a mere 50 minutes south of San Francisco. The hillside site is part of the geological landform that defines the Bay Area. As a result, the site offers stunning panoramic views, which already started to dictate a level of transparency.

Typically, there is this concern that windows and transparency is a bad thing, because students will look outside and lose focus. Well, the opposite is true in a Recreation and Wellness Center. Students go there to exercise, socialize and enjoy views of their surroundings while they’re at it. The recreation center at CSU East Bay gives students that transparency and a connection to nature, while protecting them from the temperature swings of the outdoors.

From a mechanical engineering perspective, the climate challenges presented by the bay were intriguing. We found that heating was needed, over cooling. The design of the center had to allow the building to capture heat during the day, and release it at night, especially because this facility is in use by students at all hours of the day. We came up with an idea inspired by the water-filled trombe walls of the 1960s.

Columns of Plexiglas tubes used to be filled with water, and placed on south-facing sides of buildings. They’d head up during the day and when the sun went down and the temperature started dropping, the tubes of warm water would act as radiators — they’d release heat. It’s called the Flywheel effect.

We paired this idea of gaining and releasing heat with tilt-up concrete, the most cost-effective construction technology, and designed something which has never been done before — a Ventilated Tilt-up Trombe Wall. It’s a southwest-facing wall, where light comes through glass and hits concrete, where it bounces around inside of the chamber, and hyper-heats concrete. At night, the heat released from the nine-inch thick wall warms the great volume of the CSU East Bay gymnasium.

A concrete wall warms naturally; we simply enhanced the process by placing glass in front of it. Our in-house engineers ran the calculations, and it worked.

The university is excited because the Ventilated Trombe Wall is one of the reasons the Wellness and Recreation Center runs without an active heating system. We as the design team are excited because we’ve created a new sustainable feature to add to our arsenal of techniques.

Jurors from the recent AIA Central Valley Design Awards took kindly to the feature as well, praising LPA’s “clear and well-integrated sustainable strategies” on the center.

“Simple building forms, cost-effective tilt-up concrete construction and modest materials make the most of a limited budget while taking cues from neighboring campus buildings,” said a juror. “The Wellness Center’s interiors are solid and well organized with active architecture well-suited to the purpose of the space.”

Since more than 70 percent of the center’s usable areas are naturally ventilated, the organization of the program has certainly paid off. The gymnasium, track and locker rooms are accommodated within a two story box with limited windows. The main lobby, aerobic and fitness areas reside within an all-glass triangle. This design approach not only articulates the program elements on the exterior design but also organizes the spaces according to naturally ventilated versus conditioned space. To keep the sun off the triangle, there’s a double skin, meaning the outside is covered in perforated metal. Our clients at the university opted to paint it red because it’s a contextual campus color that relates to the nearby student housing.

Atop the triangle, is a glass sky box — a place where a climbing wall can go in the future. It’s high enough that climbers will be able to pop their heads past the top of the building. Views of the Back Bay can be enjoyed, while still remaining inside of the facility.

In keeping with the university’s mission of sustainability, 100 percent of all stormwater is treated onsite. The roof plane is shaped to funnel all rainwater to a series of bioswales, where a combination of native plants and climate-appropriate species absorb the runoff before it recharges the groundwater, also avoiding city storm drains. 

And the feedback from the students? It’s been great. Obviously, they’re excited because they haven’t had a facility like this before. It’s a 100 percent student-funded facility, and it signals the importance of a place that promotes balance at academic, higher education facilities, from the students themselves. The Wellness and Recreation Center is light on resources, and the natural environment is paramount to CSU students. University management anticipates nothing less than efficient, responsible spaces and they will certainly find this in their Wellness and Recreation Center — a sustainable model for future campus buildings.