So here is the school!
To do justice to its mission as a public institution, the school campus also incorporates a public theater that seats nearly 1,000 visitors, a facility that has previously been missing in downtown Los Angeles’ cultural offer. The school is organized into four academies and comprises seven buildings: the theater building, library, cafeteria, and four classroom buildings — one for each of the artistic disciplines taught there.
The design concept was to employ architectural signs to communicate the Los Angeles community’s commitment to art. The point of departure for the urban arrangement of the buildings was the central and visually exposed location of the site, at the intersection of Grand Avenue and the 101 Freeway — one of the most heavily traveled roads crossing downtown Los Angeles. The orthogonal layout of the four classroom buildings gains additional spatial tension through the placement of the library building, the lobby and the theater tower – each acting like pieces on a chessboard. These three structures supplement the programs of the school by adding a pubic dimension to it, thus transforming the dynamics of the campus and creating new relationships to the city, both programmatically and physically.
