CultureNOW - Inner-City Arts: Michael Maltzan Architecture, Inc.

Inner-City Arts

Architect
Michael Maltzan Architecture, Inc.

Dates

Constructed, 2008

There are no podcasts available.

Description

MICHAEL MALTZAN ARCHITECTURE

Located just east of downtown Los Angeles on the edge of the area known as Skid Row, the arts campus serves over 10,000 at‐risk youth from Los Angeles public schools each year. The three phase, one‐acre campus was designed with the sensitive, contemporary, and progressive sensibilities of the founding arts organization in mind. Phase III, the final phase of the campus expansion, was completed in the Fall 2008. The 23,000sf addition includes a black box theater, visual arts complex, performing arts studios, parent‐teacher resource center, gardens and gathering spaces.

Conceived as an aggregate of diverse, interwoven forms, the building design highlights the interplay of physical and programmatic elements. Arrayed across the campus, program spaces interconnect around a network of plazas and courtyards, blurring the threshold between interior and exterior as each building deflects and gestures to mix context and program. Just as important as the specific program spaces—a 99‐seat black box theater, faculty offices, ceramics studios, animation studios, and larger multipurpose rooms—are the ways in which these spaces facilitate connection, dialogue, and exploration.

The village model facilitates an understanding of the dynamic relationship between the individual and a broader social responsibility. Children create works in ceramics, dance, painting, sculpture, or animation, and the products of their exploration are shared and expounded in the larger, more public spaces at the campus' center. The subtle inflections of the architecture host and provoke this exchange. On its north face, the ceramics tower gives way to an orange innervolume inviting the student to explore light and color. Across the courtyard, a parking ramp slices over a gallery to expose
the vibrant chromaticity of student work, teasing it into the public space. In the theater, a large skylight opens to the western sky, welcoming the natural world into dialogue with the stage. Large roll‐up doors, pivoting partitions, black‐out shades, and other simple features create programmatic and functional flexibility to allow multiple uses at a range of scales.

At the street, taut white walls protect the arts enclave and rise in contrast to the surrounding neighborhood sprawl. The campus is secured, but not isolated, from its Skid Row context. Deflections in the exterior wrapper open, inviting the students to acknowledge and engage the complexities of the city. Within, the space of the courtyard and the studios weave a texture of form, light, color, and learning to inspire and embrace the growth of the individual. The ceramics tower beckons as a symbol of the connections forged between students, the community, and the world at large.

MICHAEL MALTZAN ARCHITECTURE

map not available at this time.

Location

720 Kohler St.
Los Angeles, CA 90021
United States

Nearby Items

Skid Row Housing Trust Management Offices		906 feet
Walk the Talk		0.4 miles
Festival for All Skid Row Artists		0.4 miles
James M Wood Community Center		0.8 miles
Star Apartments		0.8 miles
Santee Village		1 miles
Untitled		1 miles