Houston Community College: Stafford Workforce Training Center

  • 07/01/17
Houston Community College

PHOTOS © SLYWORKS PHOTOGRAPHY BY SHAU LIN HON

Many people in the Houston area dream of furthering their educations, but don’t always have the means to do so. Over the past year, the Houston Community College System (HCCS) has consolidated 23 campuses into 14 “Centers of Excellence” to focus not only on academics, but also workforce training. Retiring baby boomers mean the creation of nearly one million new manufacturing jobs over the next several years.

The new HCC Southwest Workforce Training Center in Stafford, TX, brings new career opportunities to these communities through skilled training in construction, manufacturing and the service industry.

The 57,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art workforce training facility is home to classes in advanced manufacturing, robotics, pipe-fitting and welding and includes laboratories, technology-rich classrooms and administrative offices, and a maker space that hosts 3D printers along with woodworking and machine tools. The facility also has future plans to host industry-relevant conferences as well as the possibility to hold STEM summer camps for area youth.

The architecture of the building reflects the industrial nature of the technical training provided both in form and materiality. Significant design considerations included gathering and collaborative learning spaces, and ensuring that classrooms received generous amounts of natural lighting to aid student performance. The facility features flexible classroom spaces, including outdoor covered labs with active ventilation and a moderated micro-climate.

Sustainable design strategies integrate with the existing campus and also respond to elements of the site, including the use of bioswales to provide visual interest in the landscape and to clean site runoff before it is discharged into the city stormwater system.

RdLR, in association with Kirksey Architecture, recently completed the project. Kirksey designed an additional workforce training center for HCC Brays Oaks and a HCC Center for Entrepreneurship, Technology and Health (CETH) in Missouri City, TX. HCC Stafford’s grand opening was held in September 2016.

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

Featured

  • i-PRO, NovoTrax Partner for New School Emergency Response Solution

    i-PRO Americas, Inc., which manufactures edge computing cameras, recently announced a partnership with NovoTrax, provider of end-to-end life safety and mass notification solutions, to address gaps in emergency response workflows at K–12 schools, according to a news release.

  • Ancient Resilience: How Indigenous Intelligence Shapes the 4Roots Education Building

    As climate change intensifies, educational spaces must evolve beyond basic sustainability toward true resilience – we must design environments that can adapt, respond, and thrive amid shifting, and intensifying, climate hazards. Drawing on indigenous wisdom and nature-based strategies, integrating resilient design offers a path to create learning environments that are not only functional but deeply in tune with their natural surroundings.

  • K–12 Safety Trends Report Reveals Reliance on Training, Technology

    Wearable safety technology provider CENTEGIX recently released its 2025 School Safety Trends Report, according to a news release. The report is based on more than 265,000 incidents during the 2024–25 school year as reported through the CENTEGIX Safety Platform, used by more than 800 school districts across the U.S.

  • Key Considerations for Office-to-Higher-Education Facility Conversions

    Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, office-to-alternative-use conversions have become a recurring subject of urban development discourse. Office utilization rates across major U.S. cities remain below 50%, with vacancy rates exceeding 27% in San Francisco and 16% in New York. Higher education facilities present programmatic and spatial use cases that align readily with the typical characteristics of commercial office buildings.

Digital Edition