This project will go down as one of the most painful projects I have worked on. A week before my final review, I had my laptop stolen. Along with that laptop, my external, backup hard drive was also stolen so I was left with none of my work a week before final review. Add to that that I had just finished up a 15 page final term paper for another class that I now had to also redo and this became a very, very busy and sleepless week for me.
Still, however, even though the physical work was gone I had still been hashing out ideas and concepts and knew more or less where it was that I had originally wanted to go. The fact that I only had one week to produce everything over again, though, meant that I would have to work fast to finalize any ideas I had and just get into production mode quick if I had any hope of finishing it. This is the result of one very frustrating and caffeine filled week.
The Cahuenga Elementary School is to be situated in a sort of border zone on the edge of Korea Town in Los Angeles. The area in which the school was to be situated is lacking in public space, so the idea was to soften the transition between the public space and the school. In this way, the school is buffered in a way by some degree of green space that could be accessed by the community. The issue, then, was how to provide a sense of security for the children. Because a fence would just isolate the school from the community, the playground in sunk one level below grade. By doing this the children can play without fear of oncoming traffic or other dangers. The green space on ground level can then be opened up for public use, opening the school more to its community.
Daylight and outdoor access is also a big consideration and a driving force in determining the form of the school. The classroom spaces are arranged in strips to better allow light to penetrate the spaces. Heat gain is regulated through the exterior tube cladding the is meant to diffuse the direct light and mitigate direct heat gain. Also, each classroom has a very wide outdoor corridor space directly adjacent to it allowing the classroom to occupy both indoor and outdoor space.
