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| An architectural presence: NMSU's new Center for Sustainable Development of Arid Lands glows in the early morning light. |
A decade-long dream of modern laboratories for teaching and research has taken on towering reality at NMSU's College of Agriculture and Home Economics.
With its distinctive 94-foot-tall, copper-domed cupola, the Center for Sustainable Development of Arid Lands dominates the campus' west end, visible even from Interstate 10.
"NMSU was founded as the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts more than 100 years ago," says university architect Martin Hoffmeister. "This building gives agriculture a substantial architectural presence and makes a statement about its importance."
The building, a $22 million investment in the future, took big dreams, monumental effort and skillful construction.
The imposing structure contains 226.8 miles of wire-enough to stretch from the south end of the NMSU campus up Interstate 25 to Albuquerque. It is solidly constructed with 5,000 cubic yards of concrete-enough to cover a football field 2.5 feet deep. The roof is covered with 37,000 individual, overlapping clay tiles weighing 2.5 pounds each.
"When we light the dome, it's a real showpiece for any potential students and parents passing west on I-10," says Grant Watson, on-site engineer.
The three-story, 116,000-square-foot building is just as impressive inside. Sparkling teaching and research laboratories contain the latest in equipment and furnishings. A one-story wing houses teaching greenhouses, two electron microscopes and an insect quarantine laboratory. The lab, which has an attached research greenhouse, will allow scientists to test foreign insects in an escape-proof environment as they search for allies against invasive plants. There are fewer than a dozen such facilities in the country.
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| NMSU's new Center for Sustainable Development of Arid Land's stands ready to serve as a campus landmark. |
The building is home to departmental faculty and graduate student offices for Extension Plant Sciences; Agronomy and Horticulture; and Entomology, Plant Pathology and Weed Science. Nearly 60 different classes in a variety of fields will rotate through the labs, including courses in agronomy, biology, chemical engineering, entomology, environmental science, geography, geology, horticulture, plant pathology, soil science and weed science.
Vision quest
NMSU's agricultural past and future converged at ground-breaking ceremonies on Oct. 30, 1998, when chrome-plated shovels bit into the original farmland donated for the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
Founding university president Hiram Hadley, portrayed by Richard Rundell, set the stage for the event, arriving in a horse-drawn buggy. White-haired and dressed in period costume, he imparted a sense of historic Aggie pride.
John C. Owens, NMSU executive vice president and former dean of the college, mingled soil from the NMSU construction site with soil from the Vermont homestead of Justin Morrill, author of the 1862 act that created land-grant universities.
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| NMSU Executive Vice President John Owens sprinkles soil from Justin Morrill's homestead. |
Just before dignitaries were to take up their shovels, a sudden gust of wind toppled them like dominoes. The sound sent shivers up the spines of the crowd. Chuckles erupted at the suggestion that the founding fathers had made their presence known.
"Nothing is stronger and nothing is firmer than the ground on which it is built. This soil is good and rich, and fate willing, New Mexico State University shall use it well," Owens said, as the ground was broken to enthusiastic applause.
Many of those present had worked for years to make the event possible. Individuals and grower groups donated their time and money. Students who would never attend classes in the building lobbied for federal and state funding. Volunteers campaigned statewide for passage of educational bond issues. Administrators and faculty researched laboratory requirements and costs. A core group, under Owens' leadership, kept faith in the project even when its path to funding seemed too convoluted to succeed.
The drive for a new building began in 1991, when virtually everyone in the college realized the need for adequate teaching and research laboratories. NMSU's facilities had not kept pace with two decades of rapid growth, leaving it with the least space per student among the state's four-year universities and inadequate laboratories for teaching and research.
The project got off the ground in 1992 when U.S. Rep. Joe Skeen announced a federally funded feasibility study. A federal science panel's stamp of approval spurred release of nearly $1 million in design funds in 1993.
The first state funding bills, introduced by Rep. G.X. McSherry and Sen. Fernando Macias in 1994, garnered $340,000 in severance tax funds and a successful $1 million bond issue.
In 1995, an additional $1.4 million in federal funding came through, and in 1996, $7.4 million more was signed into law.
In 1996, the project reached the make-or-break hurdle: passage of a $9.4 million state educational bond issue needed to match the $11 million in federal funding.
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| Dignitaries dig: Those taking part in the October 1998 ground-breaking ceremony, from the left, were state Sen. Fernando Macias; Natalie Evans Russell, then student member of the NMSU Board of Regents; Richard Rundell as Hiram Hadley; Miley Gonzalez, under secretary with the U.S. Department of Agriculture; former state Rep. G.X. McSherry; then NMSU President William Conroy; Regent Larry Sheffield; U.S. Rep. Joe Skeen; Gary Cunningham (behind), NMSU vice president for research; and Holm Bursum III, 1998 Distinguished Alum. |
"At that point, it all would have been for nothing had the bond issue failed," Owens says. Instead, more than 250,000 New Mexicans voted in favor of funding, with landslide margins outside southern New Mexico.
Dream building
With funding secured, the work of turning architectural drawings into building began. The day construction fences went up in 1998, Owens made a predawn visit to the site. "It was a special moment for me," he recalls. "That piece of ground was going to change forever. If you can have a spiritual moment on campus, that was one for me."
Crews sinking the building's footings found evidence of the site's storied sporting past as Miller Field. Workers drilled through tennis courts that had been covered with fill soil during construction of the Pan American Center.
The Miller Field gates, just southeast of the tower, commemorate the history of the state's first university athletic fields. Today's sports fans will be able to watch the building's tower lights for game results. When the Aggies win, the tower will glow crimson rather than white.
The octagonal tower, one of four distinct sections of the building, carries on an NMSU design theme. Graduates who haven't visited campus recently may rub their eyes as if seeing a desert mirage. "I've heard several people say it looks like it's always been here," Owens says. "That's a huge compliment."
The building combines California mission style with East Coast laboratory fenestration-window design and spacing, Hoffmeister says.
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| A greenhouse with a view: The L-shaped building and its courtyard entrance can be seen from one of the four teaching greenhouses. |
Inside the tower is a custom-built stairwell that was erected in an Albuquerque welding yard, then dismantled and brought to Las Cruces for installation through a hole in the attic deck. "We set it in from the top going down," Watson says. "Its helical shape is truly unique."
The tower functions as the building's front entrance, allowing plenty of room for foot traffic on the first floor.
The attached office wing, which faces Hadley Hall and the Horseshoe, contains 48 faculty offices and 18 graduate student offices that accommodate six students apiece. The three department offices are adjacent to allow easy access for students, faculty and clientele. Each exterior office has an attractive view and a window that opens.
Conference and seminar rooms on each floor provide space for collaboration. Strategically placed study tables and "coffeepot spots" near the copiers have been carefully designed to promote water cooler conversations. "People learn from each other," Hoffmeister explains.
The idea extends outdoors, with grassy berms, shade trees and a running fountain to attract people who want to read, talk, eat or socialize. "The campus master plan calls for small, intensively green areas that function as oases in the desert," Hoffmeister says. "This is one of those areas."
The paved area northwest of the tower will accommodate picnics, parties and formal occasions. The western approach to the building is framed by 35-year-old pecan trees donated by Mesilla Valley growers Karin Davidson and Greg Daviet. "In four to five years, the transplanted trees will have green canopies to provide shade," says Esteban Herrera, the Cooperative Extension Service horticulturist who coordinated the donations and planting.
A laboratory wing facing Gerald Thomas Hall forms the other side of the L-shaped, three-story portion of the building. Constructed of concrete rather than steel to minimize vibrations for lab equipment, the wing is separated from the tower by a small gap so that vibrations elsewhere won't reach it.
A massive air exchange system, with vents concealed beneath the building's "eyebrows," ensures that the building meets safety requirements. Though floors are 14 feet apart, ceilings are only 9.5 feet tall. A huge mechanical system takes up the rest of the space between floors.
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| Careful construction: Workers place panes of glass in the new insect quarantine greenhouse, located along Knox Street. |
Six vital teaching labs on the ground floor will be in high demand. Each has its own equipment and adjacent preparation areas, allowing one class to be in session while preparation is underway for another.
An Extension Plant Sciences lab has space for processing and diagnosing plant samples, as well as holding educational seminars where participants can examine specimens under microscopes. Faculty hope to install interactive video equipment to allow training and diagnostics at a distance. Ground-floor receiving areas and soil processing facilities will prevent debris from being tracked through labs.
"The building is stratified, with the most intensive uses and heaviest traffic on the ground floor," says Michael E. Hill, project architect for the firm of Van H. Gilbert Architect. "That way, the high turnover rate with every class won't disrupt the focused areas of the research labs."
The second-floor labs have an open design to encourage interdisciplinary work. Each lab has a common theme and equipment for research in entomology, plant pathology, environmental science, soil sciences, integrated pest management, microbiology and plant molecular biology.
"We should have a lot of people rubbing shoulders who have common interests," says Gary Cunningham, NMSU vice president for research. Walk-in coolers, darkrooms, autoclaves and other facilities are placed near labs.
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| Settling in: Carol Sutherland, NMSU Extension entomologist, moves into her office in the new building in August. |
Third-floor research labs are organized in the same way. A cotton fiber processing lab has special humidity controls needed for fiber research.
Smooth, economical construction paved the way for a series of specialized labs and greenhouses in a one-story section along Knox Street. "The two phrases you heard most with this project were ahead of schedule and under budget," Owens says.
Before a single class met in the building, students were learning from it. NMSU engineering students interned on the project, which combined two types of construction: structural steel for the office wing and concrete for the lab wing. Civil engineering classes visited and studied the process.
Construction savings paid for confocal and electron microscope labs, four teaching greenhouses, a quarantine laboratory and research greenhouse, and space for geographic information systems (GIS) work. The savings also funded extra autoclaves and reverse-osmosis equipment installed in the building.
Before any teaching or research was underway, the lighted building provided some illuminating moments, notably at a Corbett Center reception last May. Owens opened the vertical blinds to the glow of the building across campus on the first night the lights were turned on.
"Board of Regents president Del Archuleta teased me that suddenly all I could do was look out the window," Owens says. "Later, he called me to confess he also drove around the building after the reception. Twice."