GLENDALE COMMUNITY COLLEGE PUBLIC SAFETY SCIENCES

In an era of real terrorist threats to homeland security, first responder training requires accurate, timely dissemination of shared information. Sharing successful models and lessons learned in the field between disciplines plays an important role in public safety strategies. Creating physical space and intersections for cross-disciplinary interaction between programs will be vital to building spaces that will house them. The new Public Safety Sciences Building combines four distinct programs into a single complex including Emergency Medical Technology (EMT), Fire Science, Law Enforcement Operations (LEO) and Administration of Justice. There are shared spaces and synergies between EMT and Fire Science and similar shared spaces and synergies between LEO and Administration of Justice. These synergies and adjacencies are reflected in the space planning; Fire Science and EMT share the ground floor while AJS and LEO are on the second floor.

The location of the site on Glendale Community College Campus, adjacent to the major throughway of 59th Avenue, provides the opportunity to express the 'theory and practice' aspects of training for these fields. The academic + classroom vs the practical + training are explored in the form and function of the project. The project integrates tradition with technology by utilizing both virtual vs real time scenarios. The 'training plane' is an armature and a zone for real time training scenarios.

Training first responders requires a level of theatre for realistic scenarios. Students from all disciplines participate in night drills. The students practice the skills they have learned in the classroom on real people in mocked-up situations. Actors are 'made up' with injuries and placed in problematic scenarios during the night for the night drill exercise. The students have to establish the safety of the scene and ‘rescue’ the injured from a location in order to stabilize their condition, while being timed and monitored by instructors. Actors are also utilized to portray frantic family members, an aspect of the practical scenario that can only be learned through experience and not in the sterile conditions of a classroom. These types of spaces and places are designed into the building. When the building is in 'classroom mode' these spaces are student 'sticky spaces': students can hang out or study in the corridor in a double volume space or on a bench or between walls. When the building is in 'training mode' these spaces become 'scenes': the scene of a crime, an accident scene, an incident scene. A double volume space becomes a well where a child is trapped with a broken limb. The student must get to the child from the second floor through the opening in the floor, secure the child’s limb and then pull the child up to the second floor through the shaft, put them on a gurney and whisk the child to the ambulance.

Training and Art are brought together in the form of the architecture. Students 'push back' on this plane and within this zone. The roof, the walls and the 'in between' are all utilized during scenarios and during day to day student life on campus.

The training zone is signified by color so students know which areas will be used for training. Durable materials are selected for each of the training zones for ease of maintenance for extended use and wear and tear by the students as they work through the scenarios.