Meyer And Renee Luskin Conference Center (UCLA), Los Angeles
Engineering Urban Living
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UCLA is soon to open the Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center, a conference and hospitality facility that will bring great minds together for lectures, discussions and conferences. The events side boasts 25,000+ square feet of event space. The hospitality side includes 254 guest rooms, plus a full-service restaurant and lounge and 12,000 sq. ft. of support space for catering. The facility is packed with advanced communication technology, from blanket WiFi to video conferencing to simultaneous translation services. The San Francisco architecture firms Hornberger + Worstell and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson collaborated on the architectural design. When UCLA told them, “Bring in the engineering firm you want to work with,” they chose CB Engineers.
The Luskin Center allowed us to unite our experience in the hospitality and higher-education sectors. We approached the project with a developer’s eye, focusing on comfort, cost and space efficiency, and with an institutional mindset, remaining sensitive to the building’s performance over time. Our central challenge was space. A height restriction limited the available space between each floor to house the mechanical systems. As CB Engineers Principal Paul O’Neill noted, “We realized, metaphorically, that we had to fit five pounds of stuff into a five pound bag. If we’d had a 10-pound bag, it would have been a lot less complex.” We used BIM and the building design software Revit to create a 3-D representation of the entire building. We modeled all of the equipment and showed how the building would operate in a virtual world. This allowed us to detect construction clashes early on and identify fundamental structural inefficiencies and streamline MEP layouts.
We delivered a very high efficiency MEP system. We implemented a custom space-saving air handling plant, which helped to maximize space at the commercial level. The building is under construction, with an expected opening mid-2016. It’s also slated to receive LEED® Gold certification from the USGBC.We delivered a very high efficiency MEP system.

Project Details

Project Type : Education

Size : 282,000 sq ft

Location : Los Angeles, California, US

Developer : UCLA

Architect : Hornberger + Worstell and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

Completion Date : Scheduled 2016

Distinctions : Expected LEED® Gold certification, USGBC