Project Team
Owner: Central Florida Community College
Location: Ocala
Cost: $11 million
Contractor: Edwards Construction Services, Ocala
Architect: Hunton Brady Architects, Orlando

The Central Florida Community College Ewers Century Center is a three-story, 60,000-sq.-ft. building on the school's Ocala campus. The Century Center combines CFCC's academic programs, corporate training facilities for the community and a 300-person conference room.

According to Hunton Brady Architects, the building was conceived as a way to provide a new image to the existing community college campus and to "express a new direction in the college's philosophy, which promotes regional economic development through collaboration between the college, the private sector and the community."

The center's main components included a Strategic Planning Center, Just-in-Time Training Center, Senior Institute, Public Policy Institute, technology laboratories and a teleconference center.

Hunton Brady's task was to design the Ewers Century Center as a "gateway building." The firm strived to come up with a design that not only reacted to the significant amount of traffic on nearby State Road 200, yet was also "intimate enough" for building users. The team's architects incorporated a sweeping curve to the side of the building facing S.R. 200, thereby addressing the high-speed traffic located nearby. On the opposite side, the building's curvaceous design flanks a courtyard area.

The architectural palette draws from the existing campus and is augmented with new materials to update the campus' image. The new structure uses the light-colored brick used on the existing campus buildings, but introduces complementary patterns and accent colors to differentiate the Century Center, while at the same time updating the look of the campus.

Internally, the building is organized around a three-story atrium, a feature Hunton Brady architects used to "promote a collegial and interactive environment." Community-support functions occur on the ground floor, academic- and community-support functions on the second floor and academic-support functions on the third floor.

Other notable design systems and materials included:

• Maximization of controlled daylight.
  
• Design of classrooms and labs to be as adaptable and flexible as possible in order to accommodate a variety of teaching configurations.
  
• Low-e insulated curtain-wall system with an integrated foil-shaped shading profile.
  
• Use of green material.
  
• Indirect lighting.
  
• Access flooring.
  
• Extensive use of interior glazing.

Upon completion of the project, the client said of Hunton Brady's efforts: "They did an outstanding job, and we were very impressed with their work, particularly with the way that they listened carefully to what we were trying to accomplish and turned that into a very meaningful long-term plan. They were very good at translating ideas into reality and in following through with appropriate support for the project."

CFCC recently selected Hunton Brady Architects to design a major renovation of the school's student union.