HERB ALPERT EDUCATIONAL VILLAGE: COALITION FOR ENGAGED EDUCATION NEW ROADS SCHOOL ANN AND JERRY MOSS THEATER

Santa Monica, California

Architectural Photography: Michael Arden Photography
 

The intent of this project is to house the collective activities of an educational and cultural institute. The institute’s mission is to raise an intensive awareness of social and educational justice, visual and performing arts, and environmental sustainability and regeneration; while seeking to directly enhance, enliven, and change education throughout Los Angeles and nationwide. The project design, in turn, is meant to be both introspective and to look out at the world, two seemingly contrasting goals which nevertheless find perfect expression in a new 30,000 sq. ft. building.

This new building is phase one of an ambitious 150,000 sq. ft. multi-phase master plan, serving as the public face and main entrance to the present and future campus. Located on a stretch of Olympic Boulevard that is zoned for light manufacturing, the site sits in a highly automobile-centered environment presently unwelcoming to pedestrians. With the completion of the Exposition light rail line however, the City of Santa Monica envisions this section of Olympic becoming an active pedestrian corridor connecting the transit system’s Bundy and Bergamot Metro stops. To this end, the site design of the Olympic Blvd. frontage is developed with consideration for pedestrians, featuring generous sidewalks, indigenous gardens, and views into the institute’s art gallery and leadership center.

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The massing of the building consists of three components: the projected shape of a thrust stage auditorium plan, the diagonal cut of Olympic Blvd. for the lobby/gallery, and the orthogonal street grid of Santa Monica for the classrooms and non-profit offices. These three elements collide and forge the massing and sculptural composition of the building. The classrooms and offices max out the height limit at three stories on the eastern end for programming efficiency and compatibility with the neighboring office building. Moving westward, the building steps down to the height of the auditorium, then steps down again for the entrance lobby and gallery space. This stepping down in the building’s mass allows the garden more sunlight and lends to a human scale to the campus and street.

Public space makes up the first two levels of the building, with access to the auditorium’s balcony seating and control room located at the second level of the gallery. The multi-function conference center, occupies a partially double-height space with large clerestory windows that dramatically capture afternoon light from above the adjacent building volume, extending daylight hours into the space. Additionally, operable windows take advantage of the thermal chimney effect to capitalize on cross ventilation, reducing air conditioning needs and energy consumption. Walls lined with bookshelves and art, a fireplace, a relaxed seating area, and a large window looking out to the street create a den-like atmosphere that is the heart of the institute. If the Leadership Center is the institute’s “den” then the auditorium is the “living room.” Its design consists of a proscenium, thrust stage, ground level seating, and mezzanine level seating. A reflective acoustic wall, when lowered from the fly loft, makes the auditorium room a complete acoustical environment supported by massive sound reflecting walls, sound locks, displacement air supply, and absorption panels, rendering microphones and amplifiers unnecessary. This design accommodates the rigorous acoustical criteria of chamber music performances and has recently become a new venue for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. The thrust stage design also is well suited for the school and is used for theater performances, poetry readings, town hall meetings, classes, graduation, and film festivals. Sightlines are important in any auditorium, but it is particularly important in school design where students can be quickly overpowered and intimidated by utilitarian, perfunctory spaces.

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The theater is a true “multi-functional” space, designed to do one thing really well - in this case serve as a chamber music setting – while performing well for other key functions. “Multi-function”, employed in this way, should not be confused with “multi-purpose” rooms, which are designed to do many things yet do not excel at any particular one. In this project indoor and outdoor spaces are highly defined, yet provide opportunities for small impromptu meetings, collisions, convergences, and teaching to occur. The clients were concerned that a tight urban site combined with the constraints of fire codes, building codes, facility maintenance, etc., would make for a “cold,” “institutional” building. They wanted a building that would be “warm” and “inviting”. They wanted an anti-institute institute.

The selection of finish materials reinforces this notion of “warmth,” and was inspired both by the immediate context as well as traditional academic architecture. Brick as a material has such a pedigree in school buildings but is also used in the neighboring 1930-40s era vernacular bow truss buildings. We selected weathering steel because it is in the same color family as brick, and has the “warmth” of brick, but is a material more suitable to a modern steel frame building, as part of a composite wall cladding system. The terra-cotta orange color of the stucco comes from this color spectrum of brick while the silver hue of the classroom volume is borrowed from the bow truss buildings’ cap sheet roofing.

The material palette and indigenous sycamore and oak trees attempt to capture the poetics of both the nearby vernacular buildings as well as the southern California landscape. This contextual grafting is balanced the self-reflective nature of the auditorium. Two acts, of looking out and looking in, are the formal manifestations of the client’s mission to urge students toward productive self-reflection, scholarship, and activism.

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Ground Level Plan - Theater Auditorium

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Massing Volumes HAEV

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Urban Presence

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Second Level Plan - Leadership Center HAEV

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Interior Volumes HAEV

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Art Gallery HAEV

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Third Level Plan - Non Profit Offices

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Sustainable Design Attributes HAEV.

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Garden Entrance View HAEV

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Garden and Roof Plan HAEV

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Converging Grids

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Site Entrance from Olympic Blvd.

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Olympic Blvd. Streetscape HAEV.

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Project location, Santa Monica

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Architectural Renderings: Olympic Blvd. Entrance

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Art Gallery/Pre-Function Space HAEV

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Leadership Center HAEV

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Concept Elevation Drawings

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