LA-based architect Michael Maltzan together with garden designer Nancy Goslee Power has completed the Inner-City Arts architecture project, and awarded with the 2009 Rudy Bruner Awards. The project is an education facility which provides art instruction to a large population of at-risk children and youth in LA, located downtown of Los Angeles.
The new arts campus was an abandoned 10,000 square foot auto body shop in the heart of Skid Row. Back on the fall of 1993, Inner-City Arts became the first project for the new office that Maltzan was opening at that time, and his first pro bono project. He persuaded his colleague, garden designer Nancy Goslee Power, to volunteer her services as well. Maltzan and Power created a campus where every space is a “teachable moment,” from the way the buildings are designed, arranged and used, to the way nature is invited in to what used to be a concrete jungle.
Each building has its own character and function. The original building was a 1930s bow-string truss shell, a huge open space with no interior divisions. Working in collaboration with architects Marmol Radziner and Associates, the design features large glass openings and roll up doors that open onto the central plaza, echoing the original auto shop doors. The light industrial quality of the original structure and the surrounding neighborhood set the tone for architecture overall. Most of the ceilings are left raw, open to the rafters.
This neutral palate allows the buildings to serve as a canvas for the students’ artwork, a background to the work that is being created on the campus. The materials Maltzan uses are taken from the neighborhood: chiefly stucco, and construction grade wood and concrete.
White is the dominant paint color, with orange as an accent. With security and graffiti being major issues in the neighborhood, the idea of white exteriors was radical. But Maltzan believes the community will respect the architecture and the Inner-City Arts’ mission it embodies.
The new Rosenthal Theater, funded by Philip and Monica Rosenthal of Everybody Loves Raymond, is the final piece of the puzzle, the campus’ most urban element. The building is mostly square, but is also shaped by the irregular street grid. Functionally, the theater is an extremely flexible “black box.” The lighting grid extends almost throughout the entire ground floor, with the control booth on the second level.
The palm trees offer shade and attract birds. A constructed dry creek bed (that the children can fill with water) represents a California arroyo, lined with native oaks and alders. The boulders and sycamores that shade the outdoor staircase create the image of a canyon from one of the nearby mountain ranges. Agaves and other native plants offer multiple exotic shapes for the kids to draw.
The expanded campus can now serve 16,000 students annually and train 1,800 classroom teachers each year to use the arts as a tool in teaching academic subjects, extending its reach beyond the campus and reforming education in Los Angeles. Inner-City Arts was officially opened in October 2008 and is located at 720 Kohler Street (at 7th Street) in downtown Los Angeles.
really amazing house, it should position to be one of the landmark for the town there!