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A classroom inside the Anderson-Ball Classroom Building at San Jacinto College Central features graduated electrochromic glass windows that automatically adjust the light according to the brightness of the sun. The building, which opens to students this fall, is built from mass timber, a type of engineered wood touted as being more environmentally friendly than other construction materials.

The Anderson-Ball Classroom building at San Jacinto College Central is the largest instructional mass timber building in the nation.

The building features wooden beams and interior accents.

The faculty suite features private offices as well as open areas for meetings.

Marble salvaged from a classroom building that was demolished is featured throughout the interior of the Anderson-Ball Classroom Building.

The building features wooden beams and interior accents.

This image shows what the Anderson-Ball Classroom Building at San Jacinto College Central looked like during construction.

A wooden San Jacinto College logo appears on a wall panel inside the building.

A 1972 bas-relief sculpture that hangs in the building was salvaged from a building that was demolished.

The Anderson-Ball Classroom Building occupies 122,142 square feet.

A sitting area in the Anderson-Ball Classroom Building overlooks the campus.

Scheduled to welcome its first students when classes start Aug. 22, a building at San Jacinto College’s central campus in Pasadena stands out from all others on campus — and in the region.

The Anderson-Ball Classroom Building is the first completed structure in the Houston area built of a type of engineered wood called mass timber and is the largest academic facility of its kind in the nation, according to the college.

“It takes your breath away,” college provost Van Wigginton said of the multistory, 122,000-square-foot structure, which has 60 classrooms for math, English, pre-engineering and humanities. “The feel is just different — everything about it is designed to create openness.”

Mass timber construction, an alternative to concrete and steel, uses engineered wood for the structural components of a building to reduce its carbon footprint.

Wigginton who has been with the college for nearly 28 years, said the building, which costs an estimated $37 million, makes a strong statement.

San Jacinto College will host an official grand opening of its Anderson-Ball Classroom Building, the first structure in the region completely built of mass timber, in an event open to the public.

When: 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 16

Where: 8060 Spencer Hwy, Pasadena, TX

Information about the building:https://bit.ly/3OUFjlp

San Jacinto College website:https://www.sanjac.edu/

“The building kind of demonstrates our commitment to the community and of creating a positive learning environment for students,” he said. “This is really the centerpiece of that.”

The building replaces the now-demolished Anderson Tech and Ball Tech complex and was part of the college’s 2015 San Jac Tomorrow Capital Improvement Program. It consists of a three-story wing joined to a two-story one by a central lobby.

In a mass timber building, the main load-bearing system — the columns, beams and deck — are composed of layers of wood bonded together in cross-patterns to form larger pieces deemed as durable as steel or concrete and more fire-resistant than more common types of construction lumber. The Anderson-Ball building has approximately 353 cross-laminated timber panels in the roof, floors and elevator and stair shafts.

Use of mass timber in commercial buildings is relatively recent, according to Michelle Old, the building’s senior designer, who is with Kirksey Architecture, which also designed Rice University’s 57,500-square-foot, five-story mass timber Hanszen College Wing. That residential facility is under construction.

More commonly used in Europe, Canada and in the Pacific, mass timber is seen as an alternative to steel and concrete because of its cost-efficiency and because wood is a renewable resource.

“There is sustainability in using mass timber for building structures,” Old said.

The wood used in the Anderson-Ball building is black spruce that was shipped from Canada by train. Construction lasted approximately 15 months before the building was completed in March. The construction process was quieter and less disruptive than a traditional construction site because of the lack of steel and concrete, Old said.

The college and Old’s team hosted two conferences on mass timber architecture throughout 2021, inviting representatives from the city of Pasadena and other entities to discuss the benefits of mass timber.

“What’s great about San Jac is that they really embraced sustainability with this building,” Old said.

The Anderson-Ball building has roughly 990 solar panels on the roof. It recycles water from lavatories and drains to limit the chance of pollutants entering local bodies of water while reducing water demand and utility costs for the campus. Electrochromic glass controls heat and glare. Plaques on interior walls educate visitors on mass timber architecture.

For San Jac, the choice of mass timber was both environmental and economic.

San Jacinto College was one of 10 U.S. colleges eachawarded $100,000 from the Mass Timber University Grant Program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. The Rice project also received one of the grants.

“The College is not in the business of promoting mass timber as a technology, but this was a cost-effective way for us to provide the space to educate our students,” Charles Smith, San Jacinto College’s associate vice chancellor of fiscal initiatives and capital projects, in a press release during the first phase of construction.

For example, the Anderson-Ball building was built on an existing foundation.

“When you have two buildings and can keep the existing foundation, you can build on top of those two building because mass timber was so light,” Old said. “With steel or concrete, a contractor would have would have had to install a new foundation. There is less material, less concrete.”

While the structure is made of mass timber, the new building’s architecture incorporates decorative features such as the original marble and a bas relief panel from the demolished buildings, which were built in the 1960s, to bridge San Jac’s past and present. The red brick exterior is similar to that of the original buildings on campus.

Aside from the eco-friendly elements and aesthetics, mass timber architecture uses an approach to aims to connect the occupants of a building to nature.

“Our goal was to make the wood visible everywhere — we wanted people to know this is the building’s bones,” Old said. “There is something pure about it. It brings in nature and has this indoor-outdoor feel. It’s not just a structural element. When you go into the common spaces the natural wood is all around you and you feel that warmth of the wood.”

That approach is exemplified in the use of glass to project a kind of transparency and wider open spaces. The building will have more informal spaces for students to meet and collaborate outside classes than a more formal college classroom building.

“Traditionally, when you think of a classroom in the old model, you had desks, students in a row and a lecture,” Wigginton said. “This new space allows us to create collaborative classrooms, and employers and universities are looking for students who can collaborate in teams.”

Wigginton believes the building’s architecture and natural elements will inspire a more bold and more creative approach to the academic process.

“This building really allows us to foster an environment where students can think outside the box, can really be thought disruptors,” he said.

Yvette Orozco is a reporter with Houston Community News in Conroe.

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