With an eye toward sustainability, the $42-million Anderson-Ball Classroom Building, designed by Kirksey Architects, adds a striking new mass timber structure to the San Jacinto College campus in Houston. And at 122,000 sq ft, builder Tellepsen touts it as the largest instructional building built of mass timber in the nation.
Delivering a large-scale timber structure came with both big benefits and considerable challenges. Due to the nature of mass timber, the team was able to reuse a substantial amount of the existing building foundations. With a lack of accurate as-built drawings, and many unforeseen conditions, the team worked closely to find solutions to existing foundation issues that were encountered almost daily.