Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, Calif.

   Use plenty of natural stone, of course.
   At least that’s the approach taken by Los Angeles-based Pfeiffer Partners in designing a campus for Soka University of America (SUA). The end result incorporates a mix of Italian travertine and porphyry that everyone agrees has brought in a third cultural aspect – that of Tuscany and the Mediterranean.
   While building an entire university from scratch isn’t a regular occurrence, Soka University’s antecedents are a far cry from the typical American school. The very name, Soka, means, “to create value.”
   Founded by Daisaku Ikeda, president of Soka Gakkai International, one of the largest lay Buddhist organizations in the world, SUA’s mission is to foster a steady stream of global citizens committed to living a contributive life.
   Eric Hauber, Ph.D., is SUA’s dean of student recruitment and part of the initial team of academics who gathered to help create the Aliso Viejo campus.
   “We hired a firm to be the project manager and serve as our eyes and ears,” he says. “That was Summit Architects of Santa Monica, Calif. They then oversaw the selection of Pfeiffer Partners as our architect of record.”
   Hauber stresses that Soka wanted the firms involved in the project to be local. After sending out requests for proposals, Summit and SUA narrowed the candidates to five.
   “We asked each architectural firm to put together its own team,” he says. “After interviews, we narrowed the list to two. Then, we visited universities with those firms and asked them to explain to us what constituted good architecture in those academic environments. It’s a tremendous responsibility to build a new university – and we wanted to do it right.”
   Hauber adds, “We also wanted the university to complement the surrounding community – which was primarily Spanish and Mediterranean.”
   Sacha Schwarzkopf, a Pfeiffer associate who worked on the project, says SUA officials wanted something indigenous to Southern California that’s appropriate for the climate with good indoor/outdoor relationships.
   “It has almost a Mediterranean feel that seems appropriate because of its hilly setting,” says Schwarzkopf. “Using that as a metaphor, we created a contemporary version of a Mediterranean hill town.”
   Because of Summit’s early work in creating the initial master plan and getting the campus project approved by Orange County officials, Pfeiffer worked closely with the project-managing firm. Summit had already started to construct Founders Hall, which sits on the front of the property, as well as an athenaeum, guest residence and small conference center at the rear of the site.
   As Pfeiffer began work on revising the master plan, Schwarzkopf says work by a civil-engineering firm at the site also contributed to the buildings’ layout.
   “There was an hourglass shape that created the loop road around the campus core,” he says. “We decided to terrace the site appropriately to work with its rising topography. This created plateaus that allow the floors of buildings to cut into the rising planes and add charm, and provide ease of access.”
   Schwarzkopf explains that it’s possible to start in the courtyard of a building, go into its tower, walk up two floors and cross a bridge, which puts you into the next building.
   To get the appearance of a Mediterranean village, the architects turned to two types of stone, both from Italy: travertine for the buildings and porphyry for the landscaping. Mariotti Carlo & Figli S.p.A. sourced the travertine after the Mariotti family heard about the university’s mission. The Tivoli Termi, Italy-based stone supplier is already well-represented in major Southern California projects, including the Getty Center art museum and the Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center.
   Schwarzkopf says that budget constraints kept the architects from utilizing as much travertine as they would have liked on the buildings.
   “Originally there was going to be a lot more stone on the buildings, but price raised its head,” he says. “We still have stone lintels, stone surrounds at the windows and the major entry places, stone banding and some stone at the bases of the building, as well as in interior flooring.”
   For the landscaping, including walkways, stairways and the one-acre Peace Lake with fountain, the architects specified Italian porphyry.
   “It was chosen for a number of reasons,” says Schwarzkopf. “Not only it is an Italian stone, but it’s very hard, very durable and has lovely variations in its coloration. We also liked its price and its different finishes, so it seemed to fit all the bills.”
   To supply the porphyry, Pfeiffer turned to Tri-Stone and Tile of Los Angeles. Schwarzkopf says Tri-Stone has supplied stone for a number of that firm’s projects.
   “They’re a good local provider,” he says. “They represent a lot of stones from here in the United States, as well as from around the Mediterranean. They have a rich variety of stones to look at.”
   Fred Malek, Tri-Stone’s president, says the size of the Soka project was a little out of the ordinary for his firm, but supplying the porphyry wasn’t.
   “Obviously, when we work with architects and designers, we help them get the stone they want,” he says. “In this case, I worked closely with Pfeiffer, and we came up with the porphyry. They like the porphyry we carry very much.”
   As a material, Malek adds that the age of the stone, and its natural hardness, varying finishes and durability have made it a popular paving stone – mainly as cobbles or flagstones – for centuries.
   “The architects wanted a strong accent that connected the different parts of the campus,” Malek adds. “There’s a potential for interaction and for privacy and there’s a mix of sunny and shaded areas. For this job it was used for exterior walkways, courtyards, staircases and balustrades, and as cleft, cobbled and slab. The natural colors and textures made it a good fit for what they were doing.”
   Helping to make this job possible is Malek’s representation of a consortium of seven Italian porphyry quarries that jointly market the material. He says this joint venture had the size to provide stone for such a large job – including more than 100,000 ft² of paving material alone – and to fabricate special features and finishes.
   “In this case we needed 3/4” porphyry in a flamed finish for paving,” he says. “The architects also wanted staircases that were 3” thick and curved.”
   While modern production techniques were able to easily shape the 3” curved surfaces for the stairs, Malek says they were still difficult to finish.
   “They took the 3” pieces and put a bullnose edge on them,” he says. “The architects also wanted two finishes on the same piece. They had to have a cleft surface with a flamed edge, and an anti-slip groove on the top of the round piece.”
   Still another challenge was creating the balustrades used on the job, simply because of the hardness of the porphyry. Because it’s a difficult material to cut in the field, even the random-sized patterns were ordered to the exact size and quantity from Italy.
   “However, delivery of the stone was the most-challenging part,” says Malek. “Once you get people on a project and get them started with installation, you can’t stop and then start again. You have to keep that flow of material, which means coordinating with the quarry, the fabricator and the shipper.”
   Tim Hughes, vice president of D B M/Hatch Inc., the LaVerne, Calif.-based company that purchased and installed both the travertine and porphyry used on the project, agrees that it was quite an undertaking.
   The firm was recommended for installing the porphyry by Tri-Stone, although Pfeiffer’s Schwarzkopf says some people in that firm had also worked with the stone subcontractor on previous large jobs, and D B M/Hatch was installing travertine on the site when the paving portion of the contract became available.
   “We brought them on board early because they were critical to the detailing of the stone, regardless of where it was being attached,” says Schwarzkopf. “There were so many various conditions for both the travertine and porphyry they had to work with and we wanted their expertise.”
   Hughes says D B M/Hatch also provided all the shop drawings used by the Italian fabricators of both stones. In the case of the porphyry, he says the added time up front during the shop-drawing process saved time later because it eliminated any field-cutting at the jobsite.
   “The porphyry was primarily used in paving applications,” he says. “Some of it was used for the bottom of the lake. We used it in many different sizes and finishes because the architects liked the material and found numerous uses for it. All of it was mortar-set, except for the balustrades.”
   Because of the size of the project, multiple stages of work occurred at the same time. At the peak of construction, D B M/Hatch had more than 65 workmen on site.
   Hughes calls the uses of porphyry artistically pleasing and functional for the Soka landscape, and both Schwarzkopf and SUA’s Hauber agree. 
   Schwarzkopf says its use with the lake near the front of the campus is especially important.
   “They wanted a large water feature as soon as you’d enter the campus to welcome the community and also serve as an emergency water supply in case of fire,” he says. “It was important that Peace Lake be very beautiful so that when visitors to Soka University – even the people across the street who want to go jogging or hiking – are greeted by something that makes them feel comfortable and inspired by being at SUA.”
   “We’re very pleased,” says Hauber. “Photos don’t do justice to the structural elements and the hard elements. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen and it’s a wonderful campus for students to feel both welcome and cherished.”

Client: Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, Calif.
Architect: Pfeiffer Partners, Los Angeles
Landscape Architect: SWA Group, Laguna Beach, Calif.
General Contractor: Swinerton Builders Inc., Irvine, Calif.
Stone Contractor: D B M/Hatch Inc., LaVerne, Calif.
Porphyry Supplier: Tri-Stone & Tile, Los Angeles

This article first appeared in the April 2006 print edition of Stone Business. ©2006 Western Business Media Inc.