Career Technical Education Center, Kern High School District
The innovative Independence Career Technical Education Center houses 17 different, diverse career education pathways and the heart of the District's distance-learning programs, in a facility that looks and feels more like industry than school.
Project Details
Project Summary
The facility was shaped by numerous design charrettes with leading Industry Partners and was detailed through continued dialog with those partners.
Inspirational spaces and quotes encourage non-traditional students to excel in this hands-on environment. Lots of interior windows allow students and visitors to see into the training spaces and observe the important work going on within them. Formal conference rooms, huddle spaces, counter-top spaces and casual furniture offer a variety of gathering spaces for conversation, idea sharing and advancing group projects.
A student-run warehouse, stores and delivers “just-in-time” teaching materials to the instructors within the facility. Outdoor training spaces are provided for first-responder training as well as areas for training new forklift drivers.
The energy efficient buildings combined with solar panel shade structures go beyond Net Zero Energy to Net Positive Energy. The facility generates more clean energy than it is designed to use, allowing it to providing excess energy to adjacent District owned facilities. Use of polished concrete floors, exposed steel structure and areas of exposed building systems save resources and allow students to better understand how buildings are constructed and function.
Its Xeriscape landscaping saves over 70% of landscape water over a standard base-case and is designed to allow the District to test new plant-types before they are used District wide.
