Unlike most campus operations facilities, The Palomar College Operations and Maintenance Complex is located at a prominent and highly visible gateway into the Palomar campus. The design team has used site topography, landscape and the strategic placement of the buildings to screen heavy vehicular uses and to create a colorful and dramatic landscape entry into campus

Since the founding of the Palomar College Arboretum and Cactus Garden in the 1940s, the campus has been home to an ever-expanding collection of rare and unique plant species from around the world. While the College collaborates with regional entities such as the San Diego Botanical Garden, the unique plant resources on campus are not widely known. This project creates a unique opportunity to display and raise awareness about the plant collection. The team’s rewarding collaboration with campus botanist Tony Rangel has resulted in an immersive and pedagogical landscape that is ever-changing and carefully crafted to the unique variations of the site. It is designed as a functional landscape that is both a dramatic showcase and an immersive series of spaces that serve the programmatic needs of the complex.

The collection and reuse of water is the inspiration for many of the landscape features, and provides the basis for the layout of the site. In hardscape areas, the capture and conveyance of water is interpreted as formal channel elements, cisterns, and the courtyard water garden which captures condensate from the overhead shade structure. In soft areas, the water elements become ephemeral creek beds that explode with color during wet periods.