The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) claims the heaviest bicycle traffic of any campus in the state system, with 7 miles of Class-1, or dedicated, bike paths, over 20,000 bicycle parking spots, and more than half of its 26,000 students—by some estimates, closer to 70 percent of its undergraduates alone—riding there. “When school’s in session,” says Adam Jahnke, manager of the campus bike shop, “you’ll see a river of cyclists rolling down these paths—it’s such a massive flow that pedestrians often have to wait for an opening to cross.” UCSB’s cycling culture goes back decades. In 1974, it inspired undergrads to establish the Associated Students Bike Shop, providing repairs in a modest cracker box of a building, left from the campus’s days as a military base. Thirty-two years later, in 2006, the shop upgraded to a double-wide trailer on the same site. Still, as generations of students continued to staff it, the quarters remained cramped and quirky—and, by 2017, serious conversations with the university were under way to create a better, more “bespoke” home for this beloved institution. Finally, through an RFQ process, Los Angeles–based architects John Friedman Alice Kimm (JFAK) won the commission. Their 3,000-square-foot pavilion opened last September, launching the school year.
Remarkably, the new $3.66 million building is wholly student owned and financed—funded by the Associated Students of UCSB, a nonprofit that collects (and invests) an annual fee from all undergrads to provide services, opportunities, and advocacy not offered by the university.
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