About the Building

Our new multi-use educational facility at the Hopland Research and Extension Center will make it possible to extend UC’s outreach in new and exciting ways. It will serve the needs of the entire community, allowing county-based Cooperative Extension advisors, campus-based faculty, and other educators to offer programs that meet the needs of people throughout the North Coast region.

The 5,139-sq.ft. facility is designed as a friendly, open place that relates to the unique natural landscape and climate. It includes a main meeting room to accommodate up to 275 people. UC faculty, graduate students, and research technicians will have working lab space that will encourage interaction with visitors, school classes, and interns.

Museum displays and exhibits will interpret our region’s natural history, utilizing soil, plant, and animal samples from the Center’s historical collections as well as a unique set of Native American artifacts.

Adjacent to the facility, varied outdoor spaces, nature trails, and interpretive natural history displays will invite visitors and event participants to explore the adjacent riparian habitats. Outdoor spaces for break-out sessions and informal learning opportunities will encourage new levels of understanding about how people have interacted with their environment, both in positive and negative ways, throughout this region’s history.

From its inception, our goal was to design a facility with low energy requirements that made “maximum use of on-site renewable energy and climate-responsive design strategies”.  Design and planning elements were led by noted ecological architect Sim Van der Ryn (author, former State Architect and UC Berkeley architecture professor, and designer of the Solar Living Center, Hopland), and by the architectural firm Paul Roberts & Partners of Vallejo. Our building design incorporates sustainability, resulting in an integrated design approach that teaches about the virtues of environmental stewardship on a daily basis.”

In terms of “green” architecture standards, Paul Roberts notes, “The Shippey Building, as designed, could easily meet a LEED* Platinum benchmark …and is designed to be ‘Beyond LEED’ in its design and execution.”

*Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design