Studio.News. 08.22: Keck Center for Science and Engineering
Designed by AC Martin
as observed and written by Jesse Janzen, Studio Associate
“You GOTTA have cadavers, you GOTTA have robots!”
Lawrence is on an impassioned rant about the booming future of robotics. A Zoom autopsy isn’t effective education for future doctors, and neither is remote STEM education.
“But the problem”, Lawrence laments “is universities are skittish to take the financial plunge.”
To get it right, these labs are expensive as all get out. But the future needs them, and needs them yesterday.
Thankfully, Chapman University, an unassuming private college hidden amongst lanes of craft houses in Orange County, rose to the challenge.
When Lawrence scouted the project and pulled into the university’s parking garage - stationed under an active football field - he had a flashback. He’d been to a garage like this before. Could there be more than one football field parking garage? But when he emerged from the garage and came face-to-face with Chapman University’s library… he knew why it felt so familiar.
He rushed to the architect’s website and scanned for images of the library. They wouldn’t still be there, would they? But when he found the photo, there they were, in all their glory: Lawrence’s robust sideburns.
18 years before, Lawrence was a photo assistant for a photographer who shot the university library and had Lawrence double as a model (fuzzy sideburns and all). Now Lawrence was back on the same campus to shoot a new building designed by the same architecture firm, AC Martin. Rad.
Once a photo assistant, now 18 years later back at the same location leading the way.
Labs are expensive. You gotta have cadavers. You gotta have robots.
Shot perfectly, these photos will pave the way for similar projects.
Today’s project is that building: Keck Center for Science and Engineering, where I’m painfully aware that every piece of equipment is worth more than my life.
Lawrence cracks his knuckles and wipes his brow. This is an important building to get right.
To Lawrence, the perfect photo doesn’t just capture this space, it paves the way for other universities to see the value, and pure necessity, of labs like this.
Chapman’s decision has paid off big. But can these pictures prove it? They have to be so good they shake the nerves out of administrative pocketbooks and prove the juice is worth the squeeze.
Problem Solved.
Lawrence comes from a long line of builders. He grew up learning “you pick up a hammer and build something”. But while Lawrence respects the men who came before him, he wanted to build his own future. So his love of buildings took a different direction than his father and grandfathers.
Being in the Keck Center he can’t help but think of his own son, Vincent. If Vincent had access to a university like this, who knows what he could become. He may never pick up a hammer or a camera. He may build something Lawrence can only dream of.
With that proud dad glint in his eye, Lawrence grabs his camera and steadies his creative focus, all concentration funneling to a singular point: find the best angle. His son’s future depends on it.
And find it he does! The request to obtain copies of the shoot since publication have poured in like a landslide, and with it, the promise of a future built by the best STEM labs money can buy.