HYBRID BUILDINGS The push for aesthetic change arose also from working in a dense setting. A school that might sit on 48 acres elsewhere is afforded a quarter of that space in L.A. In the case of Helen Bernstein High School in Hollywood, Perkins+Will had to design a facility with 2,600 seats on a mere 12.4 acres. The site, the former home of Metromedia Fox Studio, is bordered by the Hollywood Freeway on one side and an urban neighborhood on the other. After a school district employee saw neighborhood kids playing soccer in a cemetery, the architects were asked to provide green space for an entire community that lacked it.
Perkins+Will developed a four-story design very different from the two-story rectangles of traditional L.A. area schools. “Principals were nervous about the density and having a building over two stories,” says Wendell Vaughn, a principal at Perkins+Will and the head of its K–12 education division. But the idea of small learning communities changed administrators’ minds. Rather than create mammoth schools, architects proposed carving the buildings into small communities of students with the administration dispersed throughout. This way classrooms stayed intimate while the school still accommodated a large student body.
Architects also developed clever solutions for balancing the public and private faces of the schools, to allow for openness while protecting the students’ safety. Helen Bernstein, which will be completed this summer, has a car drop-off on the east side of the site, facing the U.S. 101 Freeway. Fritted-glass windows mimic the striation of the exterior corrugated-metal cladding and make a striking architectural statement as cars whiz by. Fencing pivots open to create a welcoming entryway that can easily lock when access needs to be restricted to the courtyard beyond. The west side of the school connects to the community via a processional lined with trees; a central plaza incorporates a grand stairway that can double as an outdoor auditorium.
Inside, the architects paid close attention to the student experience. Windows at each end of the hallway mean that you are always walking toward the light. Bump-outs in corridors offer space for students to stop and talk or to work on a laptop. Balconies offer the kind of views that fetch top dollar in nearby condo developments. From one art studio you can look out on the Hollywood sign and the domes of the Griffith Observatory.
The architects are quick to point out that the school not only gives the students a grand perspective on their world but also offers the public a view into the education system. “We wanted to make student activities transparent,” Vaughn says. “It’s important for people to see public education in action.” The LAUSD wanted the school to have a symbolic value, agrees Seierup: “This school district had not built much for a good stretch of time, and they were really looking forward to creating symbols for education in Los Angeles. That became a part of their mission as well.”
Accordingly, several of the LAUSD’s most symbolic new schools are on prominent sites visible from main roads. Coop Himmelb(l)au’s $209 million High School 9, set to open later this year, sits across Grand Avenue from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and joins the nearby Los Angeles Music Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, and Walt Disney Concert Hall. This is the wonder of L.A.’s evolving downtown, where Frank Gehry and Arata Isozaki are sprinkled among the ubiquitous fast food joints, strip malls, and office towers.
“For us, it was very important to make a statement,” says Wolf D. Prix, principal of Coop Himmelb(l)au. (HMC Architecture is the executive architect on the project.) “First, we had the chance to contribute to the rising image of downtown. Second was the content. This is a high school for the arts. I think it’s the one and only school that brings together the content and the architecture in this way.”
On a recent winter afternoon, Prix, fresh in town from Vienna, leads a tour of the construction site. He heads for the location where parents will drop off their kids and stands at the base of a sweeping staircase, looking up onto a courtyard above. The late afternoon sun honeys the sky and reflects in the steel wrapping the cone-shaped library. “This is my favorite view.”
In an era of No Child Left Behind bureaucracy and limited arts curriculums, High School 9 feels monumental, not just for its design, but also for the respect it offers the future student body. “This school will produce artists who will exhibit in the museum and musicians who will play in Disney Hall,” Prix says. “The architecture has an important effect.”
The school’s small site (9.8 acres) and limited square footage (230,000) meant Coop Himmelb(l)au had to find creative interior solutions. Hallways have bump-outs, allowing for sculpture displays. A grassy field includes removable goal posts, so it can also serve as a gathering spot. “We call it hybrid building,” Prix says. “Increasingly, you have to invent double functions. [This] will be the future of architecture in big metropolitan areas.”
THE HOME STRETCH The future of school construction in L.A., though, will be one of even more squeezed resources. Just as the LAUSD began construction on first-phase schools, Los Angeles was entering a major building boom, and today, despite the dragging economy, union-wage labor remains scarce and expensive, and the cost of construction materials is on the rise. Also, the district’s small-site plans often require expensive components like underground parking. Last year, the per-classroom cost to build a new school peaked at an average $600 square foot (this includes soft costs).
As it passes the halfway mark of the building program, the district is working to find solutions. It created an outreach program with unions to get new workers into building jobs, and it is trying to educate small construction firms on how to bid on public projects. It even initiated an architecture internship program for high school students: Juniors and seniors who complete a Saturday course on design and construction are eligible for paid summer internships at local firms. Last year, 157 students went through the program.
On the heels of such successes, Guy Mehula has added lecturing to his busy schedule. He travels the country talking to other school districts about the building program in Los Angeles. His favorite presentation is a riff on MasterCard commercials. He has a slide show that opens with clips of the negative press coverage from the early days.
“Then I put up slides with stats,” Mehula says. “Building 214 new schools and additions: $12.6 billion. Modernizing 800 existing schools: $7.7 billion. Proving the press wrong: Priceless.” .
To see additional images of L.A.’s new and renovated schools, visit www.architectmagazine.com.