Academic Excellence Center Southeast Community College Beatrice, Nebraska | 2020

Architects: Multistudio
Lead Architect: Kelly Dreyer
Associate Architects: BVH Architecture
General Contractor: Hausmann Construction
Client: Southeast Community College
Photographers: Michael Robinson and William Hess

The new STEM facility is the first building constructed in a campus revitalization master plan for a small community college in rural Nebraska. The facility houses classrooms, labs, offices, a large multipurpose space, and outdoor learning areas—supporting a wide variety of disciplines spanning physics and health sciences to music and fine arts.

An interior circulation spine acts as a pedestrian street from which “cul-de-sacs” connect classrooms, studios, and office programs.

Exterior fiber-reinforced concrete panels extend to the interior, defining this pedestrian street, providing a tactile separation between the interior and exterior experience. Interior transparencies place learning on display, connecting flexible learning spaces to open areas for student-teacher collaboration.

Designed as a “machine for learning,” the building’s orientation, form, and solid:glass ratio are optimized to provide passive daylight to all learning environments.

Primary classrooms are intentionally designed to leverage indirect daylight from the adjacent cul-de-sacs to provide all-natural daylighting needs, offsetting most/all artificial lighting through many hours of the day.

Similarly, a balance of direct and indirect daylight is distributed along the primary west circulation spine to create a dynamic experience where impromptu, serendipitous, and social connectivity is encouraged to forge community within a building that serves a predominantly commuter-based student population.

Giving a nod to its humble surroundings, the building celebrates and emphasizes the rural vernacular of Nebraska through color, texture, rhythm, and scale—both inside and out.

The scrim wall’s functional aesthetic nods to both the exposed structure of the metal grain silo and the way light filters through the porous walls of nearby wooden barns—both vernacular “machines” purpose-built to serve the state’s agricultural industry.

Building organization further supports wellness through a biophilic connection, providing panoramic views of the pastoral setting beyond and prioritizing daylighting to all program spaces.

The project meets the 2030 Building Challenge, fulfilling a 70% energy reduction target (in 2019) compared to projects of similar type and climate. This goal was achieved through careful analysis of daylighting, systems, and assemblies to demonstrate environmental stewardship through an ROI lens.

Further, integration of a PV-ready infrastructure was part of the initial planning process, a strategic move toward a Net Zero master plan.