The Caltech Center for the Space Sciences seeks to address the desperate need that faces science education today. At an early age, students start falling away from any interest in the sciences and engineering, perceiving these disciplines to be boring and irrelevant to life. To battle these perceptions, a spirit of wonder and exploration needs to be fostered in students as they learn about foundational principles. Seeking to break the existing paradigm, the Caltech Center brings students in direct contact with the professional practice of science, giving them exposure to what science can be employed to accomplish as well as providing them opportunities to work on projects themselves.

In focusing on the Space Sciences, Caltech provides a unique opportunity as a site and institution, with its strong connections to JPL and NASA.  Containing such a strong campus fabric, Caltech’s design language is employed to inform the massing of the Science Center.  Important solar and lunar trajectories further affect the massing, drawing a relationship with the building’s form and its ideological purpose.

While the purpose of bringing science education and professional research / development together is paramount, it does lead to difficult problems in meshing conflicting needs.  Students need to see science in practice and scientists need enough control to focus and complete their research and tech development.  To meet these needs, the program is separated into these two major elements: research space and education space. 

To organize the plan, the programmatic elements are placed together in vertical and horizontal bands according to their purpose.  The layering of these bands in plan and section creates opportunities for an interactive separation, allowing both groups to achieve their goals.

As new students enter the center, they proceed to the second floor on the east side of the building, in which two lecture / theater rooms are located.  Students then progress across the building, passing through the Lab Gallery.  The layering of the programmatic bands in this gallery creates a pancake section, where students move between two layers of labs.  Large windows open to the labs below, giving the students a visual connection to see the science and engineering research being performed.  Overhead, a catwalk provides access to the labs on the third floor, creating opportunities for audio connection between students and scientists in their passing. 

Students move from this gallery to a display space in which JPL and the occupants of the center’s labs can display their latest research, space exploration technology, and mission plans.  Project classrooms reside at the end of this journey, allowing students to now work on science projects of their own.

With the development of the plan, the programmatic bands accentuate their existence by sliding past one another and causing shifts in the mass.  Residual planes act as heralds to the existence of the movement among the bands.   

Window walls allow great visual connection for the campus to see the research being performed in the center.  Geometric areas of solid and void louvers shade these walls, fashioning a vertical system of shifting bands.