Title: Wake Tech Community College Center for Automotive Excellence
Location of Proejct: Raleigh, North Carolina
Project Completion Date: March 31, 2022
Firm Name: Gensler

Short Description: The Automotive and Collision Repair Facility sets a new standard for the future of automotive repair education. The facility draws out the best in its students and motivates faculty and visitors to engage in the discovery of their craft. The spaces elevate and inspire all who enter. The architecture aims to serve as a benchmark facility for producing the next generation of innovative automotive repair technicians and thinkers. The design fuses modern placemaking principles, educational space planning, and the complex operational requirements of an automotive facility to shape a learning environment that's iconic and collaborative.

Architect's Statement: With multiple campuses across Wake County, Wake Tech is North Carolina's largest community college. For its Northern Wake campus, just 20 minutes outside downtown Raleigh, Wake Tech partnered with an architecture firm to design the new home for its premier automotive and collision program. Though previously split onto separate locations, growing enrollment in the school's new combined program called for the development of this 100,000 SF building, set to hold more than 200 students and showcase some of the most advanced automotive shop spaces in the region.

As a commuter campus, students mostly arrive by car, so careful attention was paid to the location of surface parking lots and pedestrian paths connecting the new building to off-site parking decks and other campus functions. Exterior amenities include a landscaped ramp to facilitate students' easy access to the lower-level shops directly from the second-floor entry plaza and parking lot. Other amenities include outdoor public spaces for socializing and food truck parking, a side work yard for student project work, and an entry plaza designed to both showcase student projects and vehicles or equipment from industry partners, as well as give students and faculty outdoor spaces to sit and collaborate.

To accommodate the changing grade and the functional needs of the space, the structure's efficient floor plan connects two bars with a public zone that overlooks the automotive workshops. Drawing on automotive design for inspiration, the form of the building's exterior abstracts the way a car gently touches the ground at its tires, while sculptural metalwork informs the dynamic form of a perforated screen, which provides solar protection to occupants inside. The building's long north- and south-facing elevations create an optimal solar configuration for natural daylight to fill the space. Strategically omitted screen panels along its south facade create clear views to the outside for each of the classrooms, subtle references to the air intakes on the side of a car.

Inside, classrooms and offices fill the second and third floors, while the lobby and cafe areas let students, industry visitors, and faculty members tour and observe the shops down on level 1 through floor-to-ceiling windows. Below, high-bay and low-bay shop spaces meet the needs of students and professors in their hands-on training.

Automotive circulation played a key role in the design of the space. Thirty-foot-wide corridors were allocated for cars, while tall interior volumes provide ample clearances for cars and trucks elevated on lifts. Careful attention was paid to the functional requirements of the educational shop spaces, where storage, display screens, writeable surfaces and ample daylight play crucial roles in the educational success of the space. Outside, a storage area project cars creates an exterior yard for ancillary program functions.