Located 15 miles southeast of downtown Corpus Christi, the South Campus of Del Mar College provides a state-of-the-art learning environment for a rapidly growing southside community, introducing opportunities for employment,
learning, and community building.

The best way to achieve a balance of interests for all stakeholders is to encourage participants to share unique perspectives, ideas and aspirations for the new campus and come to a consensus on direction.  After several workshop sessions, the client envisioned a space that feels like home and offers a sense of community.

The design was created to entice, promote and support the surrounding Corpus Christi community.  The design team strived to make the space feel unique to Corpus Christi and began studying how to incorporate elements found within the community into the design, such as the local beaches and windmills. When winds interact with a body of water, a recognizable pattern is created in the form of waves. Similar patterns can also be found in studying sand at the beach. This understanding that a body of water and sand are comprised of millions of smaller elements that all move in unison when a major force acts upon them served as a major inspiration to the design team.  By comparing each individual within a community to a grain of sand or a drop of water, and education to the wind as the major force that allows us to better ourselves, collectively, we are moving in unison, creating the same inspirational patterns found within the waves and sand.

This is the story of Del Mar, an institution working with the community providing a clear vision of bettering its individuals and improving their city: a sum of all parts.