Maricopa’s CAC campus will be one-of-a-kind

Though it looks like a mini futuristic city from the architectural renderings, an architect for the new Central Arizona College campus said the buildings will have a simple, practical design.

“The structures will be one-of-a-kind,” said Mark David Kranz, an architect with the SmithGroup in Phoenix.

CAC will break ground later this year on a new Maricopa campus located on 217 acres at the southwest corner of Bowlin and White and Parker roads.

Kranz presented the designs during a breakfast networking meeting of the Maricopa Chamber of Commerce on July 14 at the Harrah’s Ak-Chin Casino Resort. He said the designs were driven by the legacies of agriculture, the desert and Native American cultures.

“The buildings will have natural ventilation; you can open the windows,” he said. “It is simple, straightforward architecture that protects itself from the sun and says ‘we were born in this place.’”

The structures will passively move air currents and offer views of the nearby mountain ranges, he said.