LAUSD OPEN COMPETITION WINNER
FLEXIBLE ACADEMIC
BUILDING
CLIENT: LAUSD
Design Partner
for
Architect of Record:
Gonzalez Goodale Architects
In the depths of the Great Recession, LAUSD launched an international open competition for the design of a 30,000 square foot flexible academic building that could supplement existing campuses with, alternatively, new classrooms, library, multipurpose, or administrative space.
Additionally, the building's design
would gradualy steward the programmatic evolution of education from District teaching standards to new pedagogies.
Technically, the building would address the rising cost of stick-built District|DSA projects, and serve as a practical new model for sustainability.
This design was one of two first award recipients. Building on new linear, de-centralized concepts of flexible 'shell and core', the design proposed an indoor/outdoor combination of bridge with attached, highly flexible modules. The proportional|dimensional characteristics of these modules, along with their paired alignment across the 'bridge', allowed a wide range of functional academic combinations (traditional classrooms, new larger pedagogies of project-based education, library, multipurpose space, or administrative offices).
Fundamental to the project thesis is that effective education is obliged to be richly connected to daylight, to open air, and to nature, and that campus density can be achieved while maintaining a formal panache.
Notable from a building performance strategy was the maximization of pre-assembled and/or pre-DSA-approved components to minimize checking time, and to maximize economical repetition of systems after first costs were absorbed. These component concepts included the since-DSA-approved ConXtech moment frame system, pre-glazed window systems, pre-assembled stairs and elevators, standardized suspended acoustic clouds attachments, etc.
New LAUSD capital projects management shelved the competition results as the economy improved. Ironically, the projected high first costs of the winning competition entries were less than the post-School-Bond rapid escalation in stick-built costs for new school buildings in the District.
