Cal Poly Pomona Architecture Undergraduate Senior Projects Book 2022

Senior Project Studio

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

EDITED BY SARAH LORENZEN, EMMA PRICE, MITCHELL DE JARNETT, BOB ALEXANDER, ANDRI LUESCHER, WENDY GILMARTIN SPECIAL THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT AND ASSITANCE IN THE MAKING OF THIS BOOK GOES TO THE CAL POLY SENIOR SUDENTS OF 2022 COPYRIGHT 2022 CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY, POMONA, COLLEGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN, DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY INDIVIDUAL PAPER OR DIGITAL AUTHORS WHO ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR CONTENT. NO PART OF THIS WORK COVERED BY THE COPYRIGHT MAY BE REPRODUCED OR USED IN ANY FORM BY ANY MEANS GRAPHIC, ELECTRONIC, OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING RECORDING, TAPING, OR INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER. DESIGN: WENDY GILMARTIN

UNDERGRADUATE

SENIOR PROJECTS

2022 undergraduate program senior projects department of architecture college of environmental design california state polytechnic university pomona

Over two semesters students in the senior project studio were asked to grapple with a variety of disciplinary concerns: program, typology, building components, context, construction methods, and representation, assessing the potential of each to frame a design problem. The first semester was essentially focused on gathering enough information to establish the conceptual design.

Students looked at various means of articulating a narrative around a problem statement and establishing an architectural strategy to address this narrative. Each investigation including case studies, built onto the next, forcing students to contend with a complex array of issues as they established their individual formal / tectonic strategies. Most students also had the freedom to select their own site and develop their own program. Students were then asked to evaluate various constraints for each lot they studied including zoning regulations (FAR, setbacks, and allowable use), demographic make-up of the area, and environmental conditions.

In the second semester students built upon the conceptual designs they developed in the fall. This included a series of lectures by the faculty to foster a number of sequentially detailed responses to various issues including: site constraints through massing, a detailed response into realistic codes and regulations including parking and life safety issues, envelope and thermal enclosure considerations, as well as issues of structural and MEP design. As they finalized their schematic designs they also looked at various approaches to materiality and detailing.

This realistic approach to design is a very intentional capstone sequence built upon the learn-by-doing philosophy of CPP. It is intended to make students think critically about design issues in the larger sense as articulated through architecture. The design theory and methods are used to demonstrate a clear understanding of the impacts of the design that they have proposed through a highly developed building proposal. That said, each of the five studio sections took a slightly different approach to both site and program with varying degrees of provided constraints as well as approaches to the key inquiries or foci within the studio.

Sarah Lorenzen’s studio focused on the design of mixed-use housing projects. The site is the Skid Row section of downtown Los Angeles, an area known for the large number of homeless people that occupy its streets, but also one that has manufacturing, public services, and arts spaces. The conceptual focus is on hybrids (such as twins, chimeras, mongrels, and amalgams).

Emma Price’s studio focused on live-work spaces, and on expanding our idea of what types of working and living might be compatible. The site is Mission Junction, just east of Chinatown and just west of Lincoln Heights - a historically industrial neighborhood with residential uses sprinkled throughout and close access to transit and to DTLA.

Mitchell De Jarnett’s studio was sited within the neighborhood of Lincoln Park, an older, intensely varied part of the city possessing a strong cultural identity and a rich mix of zoning designation(s).

The focus was on hybrid programming and its potential for creating urban diversity within the larger context of our City of Angels. Students proposed hybrid architecture(s) which seek to embrace the diversity of this area and to condense it into a single architectural project.

Wendy Gilmartin’s studio focused on “making spaces” that offer flexibility and hybridity in their formal DNA, containing manufacturing and industrial work: bottling plants, labs, artists studios, transit hubs, greenhouses, athletic facilities, and also adaptive reuse of such former facilities into cultural institutions and other mixed programs. The conceptual focus addresses the building as a connector and the nature of flexible space in a dynamically changing site south of the arts district and north of Vernon along the LA River.

Robert Alexander’s studio explored the architectural and urban conditions found at the northern edge of the Los Angeles Trade Technical College’s campus. The studio’s projects identified the opportunities of expanding or responding to LATTC’s unique urban campus and the challenges posed to students by its location at the confluence of several of Los Angeles’s most important transit arteries.

Projects may include educational spaces that directly support the campus’s community-oriented mission or allied ones, including housing, commercial, manufacturing, or arts-related spaces.

Andri Luescher’s studio focused on public service buildings, such as libraries, community and recreation centers and fire stations. The site of the studio is along 5th street between San Pedro and Central, in the heart of Skid Row. The projects deal with issues of boundaries between street and building and how structure informs the spatial experience and qualities of the built environment.

Section Sarah Lorenzen: Sarah Lorenzen, AIA is a tenured Professor at Cal Poly Pomona and principal at TOLO Architecture. She has been at Cal Poly Pomona since 2005, serving as chair of the department from 2013-2017. Between 2007 and 2020 she served as director of the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences, a house museum in LA’s Silver Lake neighborhood, where she developed cultural and artistic programs and oversaw the restoration of the site. Sarah grew up in Mexico City and moved to the United States to attend college. She did her undergraduate work at Smith College and at the Atlanta College of Art (BFA in Drawing, 1992), and received her first Master of Architecture degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1997 and a second Masters in Metropolitan Research and Design from SCI-Arc in 2004. In 2011, Sarah spent a yearlong sabbatical in the theory department at TU Delft in the Netherlands. Prior to joining academia, she worked as a project architect at various architecture firms in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta.

Adoration of Service

Joshua Ryan, Brea CA

Located on the corner of Violet and Santa Fe Ave in DTLA, the immediate context is home to various art studios, a depleted industrial core, and an arising houseless population. With over 50% of the structures vacant, the 2040 code intends to redevelop the neighborhood through a drastic change in scale. The architecture intends to mediate this change in scale at both the macro and micro levels, in which the overall form and articulation of architectural elements create ties to the sites industrialized, technical past.

Mass timber design frame works at a macro scale, in which the structural skeleton represents the bones of what the 2040 zoning code’s maximum FAR intends to produce. At the micro level, the prefabricated kit of parts allows for multiple dwelling units to form clusters, breaking down the skeleton to an orchestration of smaller forms that push and pull from a central communal void, creating an exterior fenestration that modulates the form and how it is interpreted from the street.

The program of this 18,000 sq ft site consists of Veterans Supportive Housing, the California Homebuilding Association Technical School, which focuses on educating laborers and students alike about construction practices as well as construction software; and PlayLab Art Collective; a multidisciplinary studio focusing on issues of architecture, art, and graphic design. The three programs connect through shared connotative definitions of work or rather the spectacle of work.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Filling the Voids

Kristal Audish, Los Angeles CA

This project mixes a satellite campus and affordable student housing for Cal State Los Angeles in effort to provide an educational resource for Arts District. As an extension of Cal State LA, this campus will provide additional space for the studio arts program, which includes ceramics, digital media, sculpture, and photography. The success of this program relies on an environment of innovation and community interaction.

Through the establishment of a live-learn community, students will be encouraged to explore individuality, community, opportunity, and activity through public and private spaces in the project. The goal is to provide users with a space to share knowledge in a community setting, while also promoting individual exploration through more private spaces. In this setting, students will be able to form strong bonds with their community while developing skill sets that will help them succeed after they graduate.

The form was derived through studies of solid and void and subtraction, which has led to variation in the plan and section, service and served spaces, and public and private spaces. The project utilizes ideas of public common space and private individual space to organize the program in a way that supports the vibrant characteristics of college student life and learning.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Comfort Kitchen

Natalie Chung, Los Angeles CA

Families and homes shape who we are as individuals and who we may become in the future. However, for many families, having a safe environment to call ‘home’ is a luxury that may not be experienced by all. Families with refugee status often face incomparable challenges, sometimes including the need to separate from loved ones and transition into a different environment for safety, a fresh start, and new routines. The unfamiliarity of uprooting an accustomed lifestyle is difficult, especially without the presence and support from others. This project takes a supportive position on these major life changes by providing affordable housing with an adjoining food market.

The goal of this project is to create a safe and supportive environment for its users. Not only does the project aim to be a support system for separated families due to refugee status, it is also intended to strengthen the overall neighborhood through the celebration of different foods and cultures. Food is a universal language as it heals, comforts, and nurtures in many different ways. “Have you ate yet?” is often even used in place of “how are you?” as eating a meal is synonymous to the well-being of a person. Pairing affordable housing for refugee families with a food market is intentional in creating a warm environment that utilizes food as a universal language to care for the well-being of all users.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

REACT Community Living

Jose Arturo Nuñez Areyan, Uruapan Michoacan Mexico

The housing program that I am designing is going to be composed of one- and two-bedroom apartments. These apartments would be designed with an open plan concept to foster gatherings and interaction that would help family wellness.

This program is designed and intended to house low-income families that in recent years have been displaced from Los Angeles to different and more dangerous areas due to unaffordable rents. One of the problems that people face nowadays is finding good connections and jobs, this is due to the lack of networking that people are doing because of many factors that are happening in the world now.

This design would try to tackle the networking problem as well as other issues.

The design is driven by a main flexible central space that would be utilized as a soccer field for residents to build interest from one another while watching their kids play and interact, this would help to build a community around the interactions of one another. By networking, residents would be happy, comfortable, productive, interactive, and the complex would be filled with wellness.

The area where the site is situated lacks community parks or nearby activities within walking distance for the youth to utilize after school, which would potentially keep them out of trouble. That is the reason why I am introducing the sports complex as the second program to the design. The sports complex would be composed of a turf soccer field, room for aerobics, space for martial arts, a basketball court, a swimming pool, and flexible community gathering spaces. This would help the youth to stay out of drugs, fights, and bad behavior, giving them a sense of importance and helping them stay healthy with the sports and activities that would be provided in the sports complex.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Factory Place Brewing and Co-Op

Kristin Lorentzen, South Africa & Denmark

This project is located on Factory Place in the industrial area of downtown Los Angeles in the Arts District and consists of a working brewery, beer garden, and work-live units for the residential program. The program was driven by the new 2040 redevelopment plan for downtown LA which now permits the use of lightindustrial, work-live and affordable housing in an area that has long been zoned as heavy manufacturing. As a result of this prior zoning, the area is essentially lifeless and is not highly utilized by the public so the goal of this project is to reenergize the area to become a hub for socializing, networking, and housing. The most important issue I am attempting to address is to bridge the gap between the underutilized neighboring businesses and warehouses by providing housing, social connection spaces, and opportunities for entrepreneurship. The project ideally would be financed using a co-op business model where ownership could be bought into. The idea behind the Work-Live units is to allow users to start their own businesses at home in a building that provides social spaces to network and meet other people or like-minded individuals. This is particularly relevant today because post-covid, people have been very closed off from the living and working in physical spaces outside the home so this project really presents a hybrid model solution.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Arts District Public Library

Upavee Amarasinghe, Clovis CA

This project is an affordable housing development that in combination with a public library, aims to servelower-income families that would benefit from the access to activity, resources, education, andcommunity that the library would provide. When discussing mixed-use housing the standard typology ishousing placed above commercial program, this combination is what is expected but is not what is alwaysmost beneficial. Currently, the Arts District of Los Angeles is oversaturated by retail and commercialproperties which can not be supported efficiently by the area’s population, this has resulted in many smallbusinesses closing and leaving behind empty retail space. Substituting commercial space with publicinfrastructure or civic buildings would be a stronger way to activate the urban environment, as beingfunded governmentally would create a more stable building that would not be as impacted by the externalfactors as commercial space. Placing buildings that everyone would benefit from, in this case, a library, inproximity to housing would create a social hub for an underserved area and tie the community together bycreating a public space where people’s presence will never be questioned or monetized and they will beable to come and go as they please.

The project is designed around the ideas of openness and connectivity.

The form of the building iscentered around the two large greenspaces that allow the program of the library, amenities, and housing toextend to the outdoors. The housing component of the project takes on a very light form that is open bothhorizontally and vertically creating movement of both light and interpersonal connection throughout thelevels of the building.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

The Mateo Art Collective

Heather Gallacher, Honolulu Hawaii

This project proposes affordable housing with a commercial gallery for working class artists including painters, photographers, sculptors, designers, and more within the Art’s District. Located at the intersection of Mateo and East 7th Place, gentrification and luxury development are slowly encompassing the area, and displacing those the district is named after. With the 30 year rent restriction agreement ending in 2016, artists found their rents increasing over 3x overnight what they have paid the past decades. Projects like the Santa Fe Art Colony, a neighboring affordable artist housing building, give artists a different kind of energized space to work alongside one another and are very important because they uplift marginalized communities by allowing them to illuminate culture and emotions through their art in a safe and stable place. The project will also serve the artists’ futures, as the commercial gallery will promote their work to the public, and the temporary rentable units adjacent to the workshop studio spaces will invite creatives from all over to visit, garnering even more exposure and influencing future connections to be made.

The project was developed through a series of rectangular massing and interlocking organizational strategies to create protected green space from the busy street, and dynamic unit types. Units are spacious and double height lofts to anticipate each artists’ working style and various mediums. Rather than conventional bedrooms or offices, units are outfitted with flex spaces that have moveable walls to allow the user to transform the space into anything that might better suit their lifestyle.

A perforated metal screen wraps the building and has punched openings to allow for way finding and views. Throughout the plans, sections, and elevations there are the themes of calculated misalignments and layering throughout he project, whether that be through material or form. Reminiscent of Robert Irwin’s Black3, the project reveals more of itself the deeper one perceives it.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

HELIOS

Roman Huante, Orange County CA

This project, named Helios, is a mixed-use development in the LA Arts District that aims to contribute to the revitalization of the area by providing housing, opportunities for the growth of small businesses, and implementing strategies for regenerative design. Using the new 2040 zoning code for Los Angeles, this project, once a vacant parking lot, now provides housing in the form of market rate and affordable apartments, and supports small businesses by providing a community makerspace.

Additionally, it implements regenerative design through its focus on natural light, ventilation, and sustainable building materials. The affordable housing improves accessibility for the working class, and the profits from the market rate housing subsidize the building cost of the makerspace and its programs. The makerspace then provides tools, both physical and educational, for people of all ages across the community to bring their ideas to life. Inspired by heliotropism, the tendency of plants to grow in the direction of sunlight, the building orientates its communal spaces towards the south to maximize its gains of direct sunlight, improving the wellness of its occupants. Additionally, expansive openings of glass across the elongated spaces of the units and the makerspace provide optimal pathways for cross ventilation, reducing the need for mechanical cooling systems. Finally, the building makes use of mass timber as its primary structural material, further decreasing its carbon footprint.

This combination of programmatic, formal, and site planning strategies in turn creates a project that will endure and support the flourishing of the LA Arts District.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Violet House + Center

Krisandra Perez, Huntington Park CA

This project provides long-term supportive housing and a community center south of the Los Angeles Arts District just one mile away from the homeless epicenter known as Skid row. The persistence of Skid row demonstrates that homeless relief programs must invest into a strategy that will help people permanently avoid homelessness. Long term supportive housing has a high success rate that offers safe stable housing for vulnerable people — people dealing with mental illness, trauma, chronic health conditions, and disabilities. A stable home allows individuals to receive and focus on treatments and services towards recovery. The coordinated services offered are geared towards physical and mental health, substance abuse conditions, and employment; ultimately reducing the costs of crisis resources.

The project will delve into adaptive reuse of the onsite warehouses as a community center and explore the relationship of old and new architecture. The bowstring truss warehouses were built in 1952 and lie in an L-shaped configuration. The existing building and new construction have a give and take relationship. For community spaces, a push and pull strategy unfolds a stimulating spatial experience of overlapping spaces and visual connectivity. Islands of spaces house introverted program, such as study rooms and restrooms. To further emphasize the relation of old and new, the two identities contrast by its material language: heavy solid brick and translucent frosted glass. Overall, this project seeks respectful rehabilitation of a vulnerable community and building through creative and resourceful means.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Santa Fe Housing

Natalie Simba, Nairobi Kenya

Homelessness is currently a dire problem in the Los Angeles Arts District caused by the rising housing costs and low affordable housing. Families experiencing homelessness have numerous needs, one of them primarily being the ability to find and maintain employment, provide basic, and housing needs. In addition to the need for stable housing, children experiencing the traumatic reality of homelessness also need safety, food, healthcare, social connection, and a healthy routine. For these needs to be met, parents experiencing homelessness need support as they search for and maintain employment, as well as attend programs that support them such as public assistance and community resource programs.

While the objective of this project is to contribute to the initiative of ending homelessness, I acknowledge that it is not the only pathway to the solution but merely a step in the direction of addressing homelessness. The program provided in this project therefore aims to provide secure housing and supportive daycare program to provide relief to these families. The high-quality care and education could be one of the main psychological needs to counteract and mitigate the destabilizing effects of homelessness for children, while the parents to these children could attend supportive programs for them to get the support needed to recover financially and psychologically.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

TheRealm

Jamie Guevara, Lake View Terrace CA.

Located on the corner of South Santa Fe Avenue and Bay Street, TheRealm is a mixed-use, residential building that helps provide local artists with an abundant amount of space to collaborate and express their creativity. Consisting of residency, gallery exhibitions, retail, and rentable workshops, the building’s program encourages artists to not only collaborate with one another but also inspire the general public about the beauty of fine arts and craftsmanship.

Within the field of contemporary craft or fine arts, there is a lingering argument that we often hear from people outside of the field. The division of what is considered fine arts and those that are craft can create a division between the two disciplines. Differentiating categories causes a number of issues in the contemporary art world such as people’s strong desire to categorize and people’s perceived values on art vs craft. However, the end result of it all is that art is art.

By blending the two divisions, the public can learn and understand that both disciplines stem from the same principles in design and artistry. Thus, the programs are designed to bridge the gaps and inform the public that there should not be a division between the two, but instead an appreciation and recognition of the artists’ talents. Hence, TheRealm supports the public appreciation of artwork that values materiality, craftsmanship, originality, personal expression, and cultural significance.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Plaza del Pueblo

Ashly Saucedo, Compton CA

The focus is to extend the geographical boundaries of the Arts District past 7th st to give its residents, artists, and vendors the ability to create a diverse and creative community it once had. The challenges this area faces is its lack of identity, on the southside, it is made up of industrial buildings that are mostly vacant and surface parking lots leaving little to no public open space. In 2001, a location named Al’s bar was shut down and caused a ripple effect, leaving many artists without an identity or a tie back to this area. This building acted as a town hall or town square, it became the district’s central meeting place where music and art was shared amongst residents, and those who traveled from different locations to see and enjoy. This bar housed a space for musicians to play their music, gallery spaces for artists to display their work, and a stage for actors, poets, comedians, etc to express their passion in the arts. The idea is to create a location & destination that Al’s bar once had; it had a large impact in this community because of its focus on underground talent, to reach out and accommodate every person that takes part in making the arts a diverse and creative community.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Open and Collected

Daniela Pomalaza, Mission Viejo CA

This project is a collective affordable housing project with an education and resource center that aims to serve immigrants that are underserved in the urban fabric. The site is located on E 7th and Mateo Street, south of the Arts District in Los Angeles.

The city’s population holds thirty-three percent of immigrants, many who are families with children seeking opportunity. The affordable housing portion will work to create a place of belonging for a group of people that often lives in uncertainty. The education and resource center will be supported by The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights to provide workshops and classes to support this community. The courtyard space will give the community a place to sell informally to the greater public.

The project was derived by a grid system to create a collection of enclosed private spaces that encourage the user to preserve their individuality. The grid is broken up to create larger shared spaces both in between the units and the ground level. The goal is to give individuals a space to express themselves privately while also encouraging the community to engage, work together, and learn from one another. The idea is that the spaces in between are filled collectively by the community to create diversity, integration and celebration.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

In Between Conditions

Diarra B Seck, Eastvale CA

This project is a mixed-use affordable housing development, dedicated to students studying in the Culinary Arts Program in Los Angeles. The site is located along Mateo street, sandwiched between Bay street, Sacramento Street and a back alley. It shares its lot with an existing plant nursery business named Rolling Greens, that will connect with the future secondary cafe program through an activated central green courtyard. As a result, the goal of the project is to introduce green spaces that would aid in revitalizing existing in-between conditions in the Arts District neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Even though the Arts District roars with vibrant forms of expressions with its painted murals, restaurants, museums to embellished street signs. The neighborhood still entails its downsides, where it desperately tries to mask its flaws through distractions, while lacking open green spaces within walking distance that serves the community. As a result, my project will aim to address part of the problem, through the integration of outdoor green spaces experienced throughout different levels of the project. This will in return welcome opportunities for social networking amongst students and visitors, while contributing to the neighborhood’s context.

Forming a collaboration with Rolling Greens would enhance the occupants experience by promoting wellness. Where locals would have the opportunity to access fresh organic produce, supplied by the business at a low price.

These efforts will not only aid the business’s growth but also help ease the students’ financial expenses, while promoting a healthier lifestyle. Students would be motivated to meal prep and practice their culinary skills further, when such resources are more affordable and close in proximity.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Studio 63 Fairgrounds

Ulysses Hernandez, Los Angeles CA

The Arts District today is seen as one of the largest cultural and creative hubs of Los Angeles County. It has come a long way from its origins and with the help of the new Downtown Los Angeles 2040 Zoning Plan, the Arts District will continue to evolve into something very fruitful for the community.

The area originated as the home to large vineyards, wineries, and fruit growers, later turning into a declining industrial zone. With the rising prices of areas like Venice and Hollywood in the 1970s, artists saw large opportunities at the reuse of the deserted industrial warehouses in the Arts District. The spaces were perfect for live / work studios and the rock bottom prices were an even greater incentive. In no time, many galleries emerged as places for artists to gather.

Today, The Arts District remains home to many of those artists and others pursuing their own creative realms within the lingering evidence of the once vast amount of railroad miles traveling through the area. The site in question sits in the center of the Arts District, local to many already redeveloped parcels and other still in development or reuse. With the future implementation of the new zoning codes for the area, the site at hand is perfect for mixed use development for the thriving community. With retail on the lower level, a central gallery that rises the height of the building, and residential units on the upper levels revolving the central gallery, this parcel will be a representation of many similar projects to come for the area.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

The Shop

Emane Henderson, San Diego CA

The Shop is a mixed-use housing project that addresses the adaptation of individual business owners and brick-and-mortar retail. The two programs, production warehouse and self-owned retail space work in liaison to support niche businesses and a balance in working from home.

In the wake of a new working environment, independent business owners grow exponentially. How can architects cater to a housing environment with the expectation users will spend the majority of their lives at home? Entrepreneurs create their boundaries in work and daily living. This project explores design opportunities to aid in users’ individual needs in their business endeavors. The surrounding program varies between light industrial, residential, storefront shops, restaurants, and produce warehouses dispersed in the neighborhood and .5 miles from the Arts District.

The Shops individual retail space extends from ground level to the third floor, ranging in retail, restaurants, and workshop experience. A public ramp on levels 1-3 is integrated to emphasize inclusivity. Connecting the ramps circulation from street to the third-floor outdoor dining provides accessibility to all members and visitors of the community. Additionally, the ramp guides visitors through a point, travel, and arrival outline. Entering the site from the street and traveling along the ramp to each shop destination.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Section Emma Price: Emma Price is a licensed architect practicing in Los Angeles. She received her M.Arch from UCLA in 2015 and her BA in Architectural Studies from Brown University in 2009. In addition to teaching at Cal Poly Pomona since 2017, Emma is the founding principal of EP Architecture and a project architect at Taalman Architecture. Emma brings with her a background in art, research, and fabrication, as well as a deep interest in physical experience. Notable projects include exhibition design for the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC and a series of experimental retail spaces for fashion brand Eckhaus Latta. She previously taught at UCLA.

The New Old

Kimberly Carlisle, Arroyo Grande CA

This live-work project will provide individuals, couples, and families a space to upcycle material and sell goods via e-commerce in a currently abandoned historic building in the Mission Junction/Arroyo Secco area. The building will provide for users’ current needs with a design that allows for flexibility and self-expression for the users, and flexibility to be reused in the future as needs and program evolve.

Re-use of materials and goods is the second-best step to limit our use of natural resources. Additionally, there is a necessity for re-use of old buildings that allows for further re-use in the future in order to reduce construction waste and offset emissions. This flexibility of use and self-expression for the user will be found through the use of a prominent structural grid and rhythmic and repetitive design that focuses on tactics for future building re-use. This project will have a strong theme of reuse and a relationship between old and new, at the large scale of the building, and at a smaller scale of the users. This project also recognizes that ultimately, even the newly added portion of this project will become something old to be reused itself. Both the program and the design choices work with overarching ideas of the inevitability of change and the existential necessity of cyclical thinking. .

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

The Greenhouse

Sarineh Nahabetian, Glendale CA

The Greenhouse project aims to solve the dual problems of shelter and hunger for the underserved community of Lincoln Heights. There is a close connection between food security and housing security. Both are basic human needs and can become competing priorities on a tight budget. Lincoln Heights is located to the east of downtown Los Angeles and is an undeserved and neglected vehicular-oriented area that is filled with industrial buildings. The median household income in the area is very low. This live-work development will provide affordable housing, urban farming, and job opportunities for both the residents and the community. This project is located at the corner of North Broadway and South Avenue 19 and includes residential units, a restaurant, a farmers’ market, training center, and greenhouses.

The users of this program would be low-income families who can also work in the same place they are living. The food produced in the greenhouses will feed the families and provide for the restaurant and the farmer’s market. There will also be a training center that will train people to work in the restaurant or the greenhouses. The semi-shared greenhouses on each residential level will encourage socializing and food production for personal use. There are also the larger greenhouses which will primarily produce food for the farmer’s market and the restaurant. The users will be able to have their private living spaces and shared time in the communal spaces.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

La Vecindad

Deyra Rodriguez, Whittier CA

Hispanic small business owners are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the US. Despite their contributions, street vendors face many challenges and are often overlooked as economic agents and unlike other businesses, are often hurt rather than helped by municipal policies and practices. By providing a space where local vendors can start or expand their business this live/work swap-meet/ marketplace will give them a space where they feel comfortable and don’t have to worry if anyone will come around and shut down their business. They will be able to learn from one another, and share ideas and knowledge within the community. Not only will the residents have their own market stall, but there will also be temporary stalls for anyone interested in coming and setting up when needed. The Albion Riverside Park and Downey Recreational Center will bring in foot traffic and will also serve as an extension for street vendors. Creating a dense mixed-use complex while incorporating multiple outdoor spaces was quite challenging. This project consists of a centralized courtyard for the residential units to provide a flexible communal space for events that can be hosted for the residents and the neighborhood. It is a porous building providing multiple outdoor spaces, both private and communal.

Pushing and pulling volumes creates pockets for balconies and patios which allow for additional faces within the units to maximize natural air and sunlight.

Overall, this building is about bringing the community together and finding a way to grow in order to create a safe space to celebrate food, music, and culture.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

La Plazuela

Noel Cordero, South El Monte CA

This live-work project will provide the surrounding residents of Lincoln Heights, small business owners, and street vendors a place to shop, leisure, and sell on a site located right in front of the Downey Recreation Center. This building will provide for the street vendors’ and small business owners’ needs as a space where their business can flourish, serving a safe space in which they can safely sell away from threats from hassling or crackdowns. The plaza is big enough to host a variety of events such as a farmer’s market, flea market, and other events catered to the community. Not only will the street vendors living in this building have the opportunity to sell their goods, but the plaza is open to other street vendors from around the city too. In addition, this space will also serve the residents of Lincoln Heights as a place they can enjoy that’s not too far from their homes. By providing this space for both vendors and residents they will be able to enjoy a space that is not usually provided for marginalized communities like them. Although the neighborhood has a sports complex with plenty of green space, the neighborhood still lacks the opportunity to provide residents a place to leisure. This complex has been criticized for not providing places to rest or shade. This is why the plaza is designed to be able to address the ongoing issues in this neighborhood. Encompassing the plaza is the building, which was designed in an L-Shape to be able to maximize and prioritize the plaza to be able to provide the vendors as much space as possible. The project has a strong sense of ownership for both the vendors living on the grounds and the people of Lincoln Heights. This building works to be able to provide a space that brings communities together and creates a space for communities that need it the most.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

The Spring Street Apartments

Addy Holenstein, Portland Oregon

There is a new housing typology forming in the post-COVID era due to the fact that not all housing types support the working from home lifestyle. This project explores the potential of what this new typology could offer for those interested in working from home. The Spring Street Apartments sit across from the Los Angeles State Historic Park on the corner of N Spring Street and W Ann Street within the Cornfield Arroyo Seco specific plan area. The ground floor of the site is an extension of the Los Angeles State Historic Park for both residents and visitors with seating outside and the lobby, and a smoothie bar and a fitness studio inside. Additional double-height common areas are placed among the upper floors and are open to the hallway so anyone walking by is immersed in the public space. This program type encourages people to get out of their homes and offers social interaction which is often lacking in the work-from-home environment. The live/work apartment units are located on the second through sixth stories. Three two-story units have the work area on the second floor to create a hard boundary from the living area.

Sixteen single-story units feature large folding walls connecting the work area to the rest of the unit that can be opened or closed. This design allows for a softer boundary between live and work. This project is intended to encourage this new working model and promote a healthy, social lifestyle while working from home.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Women’s Building

Nergis Gizem Kalkan Almonte, Istanbul Turkey

The project provides supportive housing, childcare, and an art and education center for woman and children who are survivors of domestic abuse. The housing development serves single unaccompanied women, particularly those escaping domestic violence, and connects them with safe permanent housing as well as supportive services. This housing consists of multi-story, below-market rate units designed to provide women and children with not only safe but also comfortable and affordable permanent housing without time limitations. As part of the project, a childcare program is offered to residents so that they can improve their economic mobility and create housing stability as well as to promote the healthy development of their children. In addition to the residential component of the development, there will be a public arts and education center, located within the historic building on the site. There will be a variety of art classes, workshops, creative studios, and exhibition spaces for residents and the public to display their work and connect with other artists. This center will provide help to the residents who are survivors of domestic abuse. This type of abuse affects one’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors and can significantly impact one’s mental stability. Art will allow these women and children from backgrounds of domestic violence to gain positive and therapeutic benefits. The concept of this project to provide a range of protected communal courtyards to create specifically secured exterior areas for women and children. It will not only help them to feel secure it will also help them to create shared activities and bring these women and children together.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Craft Crossroads Intersection Between Community and Craft

Jessica Lam, Fountain Valley CA

This project is composed of artist live-work lofts and public art studios open for both the residents and neighboring community. It sits at the cusp of the Lincoln Heights neighborhood and adjacent industrial zone, across the street from the Brewery Art Lofts. Brewery Arts Lofts is an existing live-work development for artists and exist within a community bubble that is independent from the rest of the neighborhood, only being open to the public twice a year. In response, this project provides a strong connection to the neighborhood and serves as a hub for interaction between the artists and surrounding community. The art studios are not only open for public independent use but also have classes taught by the resident artists, and there is equipment available for the public to rent, allowing more opportunities for the neighborhood to be exposed to the arts. The massing consists of a thin bar scheme with circulation that weaves through the spaces. The two programmatic elements are integrated throughout the building at all levels - along with the open circulation, the porosity of the building is emphasized and allows for moments of interaction between the two user groups. The ground level has several openings that flow from the street into a courtyard that contains open spaces, flexible for any type of activity including an art exhibition, class workshops, and socializing.

Overall, this project explores how a space can be designed for interactions between the resident artists and neighboring community of Lincoln Heights.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

at odds

Luciano Nandino, Fontana CA

The neighborhood of Mission Junction, informally known as dog town, is currently experiencing a facelift, and it is beginning to look botched. Los Angeles State Historic Park is a large newly created green space in the neighborhood and despite its benefits has collaterally accelerated the alienating cycle of gentrification.

Evidence of this appears as towering condominiums pop up from out of the ground and fashionable eateries start to litter the landscape. As expected, the lower economic classes and manufacturing sectors are being pushed into more affordable areas. This project combines at–odd programs (affordable housing and maker space) to maintain the equitability of this rare green space and retaining the means of production in a changing neighborhood. By remixing and sampling the industrial architectural language of the surrounding context and tailoring the architecture to match the needs of both programs without hindrance creates an architecture that provides a glimpse into a compatible relationship.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Mixed-Use Hotel and Residential Tower Commercial and Hotel + Residential Hybrid Building Jared Pablo, Exeter CA

The project acts as a safe housing space for queer and transgender artists who have been left behind due to discrimination, displacement, and housing insecurities in the Arroyo Secco area of Los Angeles. Located in Mission Junction near the Woman’s Building, a noted landmark in Los Angeles queer history, this project aims to use a live-work program in order to provide transitional housing and services, private and public workspaces, and a public art gallery where artists can showcase and sell their art to the public. As the houseless and unemployment rates rise for the LGBTQ+ community, the project aims to nurture and emphasize community for LGBTQ+ individuals through pockets of communal safe spaces at different scales throughout the project. These spaces are voids within the project that create a figure-ground relationship in section. These voids are gathering spaces that are accessible through units and their balcony spaces, the residents through the residential corridors, or the public in the grand central courtyard. Overall, the project is meant to celebrate and protect queer and transgender culture, and whatever intersectionality exists there, through communal and safe pocket spaces.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

“El Vecindario”

Itzia Salinas, San Jacinto CA

El Vecindario reflects the community, culture, and multigenerational model many immigrants leave behind when they migrate to the United States.

Located in the Arroyo Seco Mission Junction area of Los Angeles, the project is a work-live model that combines multiple programs that emphasize stability and well-being for immigrants and refugees who need community, income, and resources. The project will serve as a place to encourage financial empowerment, stability, and control for them. Essentially the building will become a safe place for immigrants and refugees to work and live simultaneously.

The architectural approach of the project focuses on the adaptation of the single-family garage into a multi-family model, and utilized plazas, courtyards, and circulation as forms of engagement. These ideas reinstate the idea of flow and engagement of the site, views, and stability. Plazas and courtyards are an essential part of the project, as they promote culture, community, and engagement to the site and park. Many immigrant groups are used to having small plazas or courtyards in their homes where natural sunlight and ventilation come in. The project is designed to be flexible and at the service of the users with multiple rooftop spaces and workshop areas.

Garages provide a valuable flexible extra space for a home, however, that option is typically only given to townhomes or free-standing houses. The idea is for most units to have a garage-like space to use as their workspace. Three larger garage-like workshops will be located on the ground floor for larger projects, inquiring about labor services, and for others to learn about a trade or skill.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

In the Green

Apinya Sangrugee, Thailand

The outbreak of COVID-19 accelerated the trend of office workers and freelancers working from home, but for many families or people living with roommates there are significant challenges with inserting work life into a domicile, and most apartments are not designed with this dual function in mind. This project provides live-work apartments in the innovation zone of Mission Junction, across from Los Angeles State Historic Park. The residents of this project are office workers and freelancers who may need to work from home for their primary jobs or side jobs. This market-rate project aims to promote productivity for users working from home by addressing challenges that arise from combining living and working, and by establishing a connection between working space and garden spaces through careful design of the interstitial space of the connection between working space and nature. An environment that creates a productive atmosphere is created. The project includes both shared communal working space and private working space within the housing units. Most living units are apartment types, but the project also provides hybrid units which are co-living types. This type is for people who need larger space for their equipment or larger working space where they share working spaces and living spaces. The question of this project is how can enhance working productivity while providing a functional environment for multiple users who need to live and work in the same unit.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Market Mission Junction

Alexander Gonzalez, Lodi CA

The intention for this project is to provide live-work commodities for the local, low-income food vendors of Mission Junction by merging the need of affordable housing with a flexible working environment that adapts according to the changing need of its residents. The community-oriented fabric of the project will introduce a new alternative to the stagnant, stark industrial fabric of the area and reinstate a missing cultural identity in the neighborhood.

The project is located aside Los Angeles State Historic Park along Baker Street, North Spring Street, and intersected by Wilhardt Street. In the search for possible solutions for the housing crisis, Los Angeles finds itself needing livework environments that are adaptable for its residents. In time of high rent prices and a volatile food industry dependent on physical business, many Mission Junction residents have become victims are unable to adapt to these changes.

A main objective is to make a connection between housing living spaces to the public community spaces without compromising the privacy or needs of the residents. The site’s ground level is designed as an open colonnade that houses a temporary market, and is integral to establish an emblem to the community. The mass of the building hovering over the site will hold housing and a market stall at the mezzanine level. This levitation of building program creates a bridging between the park and the industrial fabric of Mission Junction.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Vertical City

Jorge Torres, San Bernardino CA

The area between Mission Junction and Lincoln Heights is mainly composed of industrial zones with very little pedestrian life. The site is located on the corner of N Spring Street and Avenue 18, with a park to the south, industrial to the north, and residential to the east, with no connection from the park to the street. The project aims to revive a neighborhood by introducing a mixed-use building based on an updated model of the living-above-the-shop. It consists of some rotating retail spaces and workshops with corresponding residential units and an interior alley that connects the park and the active street. The project is made as an incubation space for people wanting to start their own business while also inviting people into the project. Residential units face away from the interior alley while also getting pushed back to introduce balconies and workshops and retail spaces face the interior alley, causing the project to read differently on each face. The central staircase allows people to access the different levels via a central metal staircase where people can go up and visit the workshop spaces, while some levels are more private for residents with communal spaces on certain floors. The staircase runs are misaligned and constructed out of lightweight metal grating so that people can interact with each other as they progress through the building.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

UnionScape

Efrain Vargas

This affordable housing project located in the Arroyo Seco area of Los Angeles aims to provide living units for manufacturing families in need and a cultural hub for a local labor union. The site is located in the heart of one of Los Angeles’s industrial neighborhoods and is in an excellent location to improve the quality of life for manufacturing workers while retaining local manufacturing in the neighborhood. Manufacturing firms tend to have workers with the longest trips to work with the average manufacturing worker traveling between 18-25 miles each way on their daily commute. This relatively long distance indicates that manufacturing firms are considerably more likely to employ workers from outside their home county than other businesses. Design challenges the project faces include daylight and public space due to the narrow lot size. The neighborhood itself lacks public-oriented spaces, creating a disconnect from the industries and residents of the area. The project explores the idea of borrowing light which is the capture of light falling on the exterior of a building and transporting it to the spaces where it’s needed. Strategies of borrowing light can conveniently light an otherwise dark central space while simultaneously providing crossventilation into the surrounding rooms. The project also explores monolithic expression. It investigates the opportunities and possibilities contrasting exterior impression with section reality. Using this strategy as a structural and aesthetic design tool, the architecture stands out for its strong and clear appearance.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

The Collective Brew House

Zoe Zimmerling, Templeton CA

This project aims to bring start-up microbreweries together to minimize the initial costs of creating their businesses. The project also creates a community for microbrewers to share ideas, collaborate with each other, and find suppliers in order to get the best value during the early life of their product creation. This diversity also creates a location that attracts customers and gives exposure to several different brands. The building has an array of spaces for customers to socialize while they enjoy their beverage: the outdoor courtyard, the balcony overlooking the park, and a variety of tasting areas that give the customers a view into the brewery production.

The Mission Junction neighborhood has a history of having breweries, distilleries, and wine tasting rooms, and is a primarily commercial industrial area. This makes it an ideal location to create a place for microbreweries to come together under one roof. In addition to the microbrewery cooperative, the project will include apartments for young professionals and microbrewers to help reduce the housing shortage in the area. The housing has several different communal spaces to extend the social presence from the brewery to the residential area. The apartment is divided into two different housing types single level and loft-style housing. The residential and brewery program is a unique combination, but still, share the same idea of creating a space for socializing. Overall, this project helps create a space for microbreweries to grow and space for more housing in the neighborhood.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Section Mitchell De Jarnett: Mitchell De Jarnett graduated from the California State University, Long Beach School of Fine Arts and the UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning. He has practiced in the USA, France, Germany, India and Egypt where he managed the design of the interiors for the Library of Alexandria for Snohetta Architects. His current practice spans public art, exhibit curation, and landscape/architectural design. His past projects include a large public plaza / environmental artwork (with partner, artist Lita Albuquerque) at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. He was Lead Designer in the Irvine office of HMC Architects where he directed the design of campus master-plans, institutional buildings and schools. Recent work includes two 24 story office buildings designed in consultation with Studio Mumbai architects which are part of the new Zhendong City of Finance (master-planned by Arata Isozaki) in Zhenzhou, China. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Grand Central Art Forum since 1997 and has taught at SCI-Arc, Otis College of Art and Design, UCLA, Mt. San Antonio College, and the California State Polytechnic University at Pomona.

Cruzando

Brian Caballero, Riverside CA

Located in Lincoln Park, Plaza de la Raza, is a culture center that gives young artists, who had been given no opportunity to be heard in this country, a voice through their expression of art. With property values rising, young artists and families are being displaced from their community, leaving little to no identity left. As an extension of Plaza de La Raza, I aim to design a live/ work component that enables more opportunities for young artists. Cruzando will also serve as a connecting bridge for the social, artistic, and cultural communities of Lincoln Park and to the greater city of Los Angeles.

Plaza de Raza has always been a tool of opportunity and a destination where one can connect with their heritage. Likewise, Cruzando will support young artists to convey their culture with a performance center, an art gallery, and creative spaces. With the large developing complex of the city of Los Angeles, the Lincoln Heights community has struggled with its ability to maintain diversity despite its rich history. This project will provide a vital resource to the existing and future artists of Lincoln Heights by providing shelter and a space to celebrate the diversity of culture through their art. The project’s axiality will differentiate from the urban fabric as it will be oriented towards Plaza de la Raza, creating a tangible connection.

Cruzando will question how architecture can create a close-knit community fostering artistic development through a study of pattern surface colors.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Sunny TEAM

Alondra Delgado, Pomona CA

Located in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles the site is surrounded by residential homes and complexes, schools, open spaces, public facilities, and small businesses. The community holds potential for programs to aid families who need assistance with their children; while parents work, children can learn and engage with one another. With the site being near other schools and bus stops, where students from elementary, middle, and most high schools can gather and develop new skills. It is essential to address that the city of Lincoln Heights is primarily a low-income area where families face hardships and need resources. The community people have significant belief in having great collaborative spaces.

Sunny TEAM can have a significant impact in helping families by providing a dependable area for their children preparing them for college. Creating a space, a college preparatory, a hub that can potentially keep kids out of trouble and provide resources to lead them towards having a successful future. The main focus of this project is offering college-prep education for students interested in pursuing STEM and other related career fields. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is an interdisciplinary learning approach that connects real-world lessons to classroom experiences. Students learn by doing and connect to career opportunities in these subjects. STEM programs typically foster a project-based learning environment and provide a handson curriculum to all students. The use of technology, flexible classrooms, and collaborative problem solving within STEM programs create a learning environment where students can develop skills in critical thinking and teamwork.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

La Bibloteca de Salud

Juan Garcia, Riverside CA

Libraries are in a crisis, struggling to adapt to the changes in the storage and distribution of human knowledge which is shifting from the material world into the digital. The Lincoln Park neighborhood is home to a large population unhoused citizens. These members of the community are in dire need of social and wellness services. “La Biblioteca de Salud” explores the interconnected relationship between wellness, knowledge, and light.

I propose a building that provides a meeting for the unhoused citizens of Lincoln Park and the health professionals of the USC Keck Medical Center.

The adjacent USC Global Health building hosts scholars who research global issues health and wellness. “La Biblioteca de Salud” creates a spatial bridge between these scholars and the local unhoused community of East L.A. The current perspective of the USC facility needs to shift in order to contribute to the health and dignity of the community that surrounds it. Linking the community of Lincoln Park together with the USC Global Health Center will make available health and wellness services for the betterment of the community, as well as providing a new model for distribution of public health resources to the people who need them.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Vocational Vision

Khanh Dinh, Phan Thiet City Viet Nam

My goal is to develop a more holistic response to the problem of accessible design of low-cost housing in los Angeles. In fact, only 6% of homes across the U.S are considered accessible, while 15% of U.S households are home to someone with disability. Vocational Vision considers the current problem of housing crisis in Los Angeles and provides a reasonable amount of actcessibility to this minority.

As to impairment and disability in architecture, standardization has led to accessibility norms which focus mostly on wheelchair access. One all-inclusive design may not fully represent an organic and totalized solution to the problem of creating accessible space in our city. The social norm often determines what can be built for the disabled citizens of Los Angeles. Architecture should erase barrier within the built environment that separates the disabled body from the “abled” one. This offers a space that is architecturally sound, aesthetic, and able to accommodate all needs from a variety of human bodies. The design process essentially demands a better knowledge from user’s experiences.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Workman Apartments

Janis Liu, Temple City CA

Located in Lincoln Heights, California a block away from the Interstate 5 Freeway, Workman Apartments is an affordable housing project mixed with various public services for residents and the local community. This project takes a bar typology and explores how 3 separate towers interact with the bar. This bar is dedicated to 22 2-bedroom apartments cladded with a concrete GFRC panel with white stucco. In contrast, the three towers have different characteristics, reflecting their own respective program. The furthest east tower with the slanted roof is the daycare center with outdoor play space for children to play.

The building is oriented from east to west, following the sun path and maximizing natural daylighting. Because of the varying heights of each tower, each courtyard is shaded appropriately throughout the day to reduce direct heat gain within each courtyard. Because of the specific site location being so close to the freeway, Workman Apartment attempts to address the noise and air pollution through sustainable strategies such as green facades, solar orientation, and wind orientation. With the tallest building facing the freeway side, it also anchors each public program further from the pollution.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

LEBBEUS

Yaozhen Liu, Rosemead CA

“People from every social class inhabit free spaces—whoever desires or needs to transform their everyday life patterns from the fixed to the fluid, from the deterministic to the existential.” Those who make free spaces on their own, those whose lives, day to day, consecrate space with their own densities of meaning, should be understood as a form of occupation in the community. Action transforming itself over time, a space that has been occupied or abandoned for whatever reason reverts to the common domain according to the needs of a community. Lincoln Park is an established neighborhood with residential and industrial communities. The park is meant to provide a public space for the residents and enhance the identity of the Lincoln Park community. In addition, the park’s characteristics are intended to activate the site and the entire neighborhood.

Absence of organized spaces; Lack of transitions between outdoor and indoor programs; Loss of variations of collective space; Deficiency of the identification in the neighborhood To solve these issues, the new structure must have multifaceted programs.

Lebbeus is a project that aims to reveal the needs of a community center.

It is an ultimate Thule of point for the Lincoln Park neighborhood. The project is located on the Northeast side of Lincoln Park. There are mainly residentials and schools surrounding the new project site. Lebbeus becomes an emerging point that will arise with other structures. In doing this, a mediator between the industrial grid and the school is injected on-site.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Sereno Heights Continuation School Beyond the Y afterschool program

Cynthia Martinez, Long Beach CA

When moving through primary school and secondary school, one is always told that high school is the next steppingstone before entering college or the work force. Continuation School is not an option given to incoming high school students as it is associated with students who have to make up credits do to dropping out or failing enough classes. Not only does Continuation School provide a second chance to many who can not attend traditional high school ( due to personal matters ), it also provides a faster pace shortening 1 year of high school into 1 semester ( 4 years into 2 years). Another result of its negative image is that several Continuation Schools are severely underfunded, providing students with less than ideal environments for learning.

Sereno Heights Continuation School is located at the border of Lincoln Heights and El Sereno, at the intersection of Multnomah Street and Soto. The Continuation School is an educational facility which creates an environment similar to traditional high school. The building typology is in an ” L” shape so that the buildings face the inner courtyard. In total there are 6 classrooms ( 2 lecture rooms, 1 art room, and 3 lab rooms) along with 3 multipurpose rooms that can be organized to create a large class space. With views to both the courtyard and the streets, a student isn’t confined in a bland space but rather encouraged to engage with the different spaces offered. While the main purpose of building is a continuation school, Beyond the Y has access to the building for afterschool and summer programs. The lower floor of the research and media center directly interacts with the courtyard while the second and third floor interact with the classrooms.

ARC 4611L

N Z

Y

C

W

P X

U

N Q S Senior Project Studio

R.A.M.P. Apartments (Rehabilitating Accessibly Made Place)

Jose Alexander Menjivar, Upland CA

The corner lot of Mission Rd and Selig Pl is directly across Lincoln Park and adjacent to many community-service focused organizations. Due to the problem of inaccessible resources in lower income neighborhoods, Illness, injuries, and mental health become secondary problems to monetary issues.

This can lead to many more financial disparities. Lincoln Heights has a large number of houseless individuals who are more susceptible to these inequities because of the lack of treatment opportunities nearby. As a proactive approach this project aims to provide a rehabilitating space for psychological and physical treatments, accessible to everyone in the neighborhood.

Another form of accessible inequities is physical inaccessibility. The housing component of the project, which is placed 1 and 2 floors above ground level, responds to this issue with an accessible ramp reaching every unit for equal outdoor vertical circulation that enjoys the courtyard component of the design. The ramp carves through the project within two street facing courtyards which are an urban response to both, the adjacent Lincoln Park and Mission Rd, a busy street.

Outdoor community spaces are in the center taking advantage of all courtyard views, natural lighting and ventilation. R.A.M.P Apartments can provide 23 units for people with physical disadvantages to experience a portion of universal design.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

LPUNC

Valeria Redekosky, Riverside CA

The Lincoln Park Urban Nature Center is located in the heart of Lincoln Park, a historical landmark to Los Angeles that is often overlooked. With green space per capita being so low in Los Angeles, it is important to acknowledge existing green space that is undervalued in the city. Lincoln Park is a prime example, what once was an attraction to many isnow under maintained and often overlooked.

The Urban Nature Centers goal is to primarily bring some function back to Lincoln Park, giving purpose and acknowledging that it is a vital part in the community.

This is done through a series of programs that are meant to teach about green living in an urban context as well as bring interest and importance to city parks like Lincoln. The building itself is meant to connect with its surroundings, creating a constant blur with the inside and the outside as one experiences it.

In doing this, it will spread the knowledge on nurturing and re-imagining existing green spaces and their importance to the city as a whole.

There is no such thing as untouched nature, bring function to what is existing and undervalued and teach how to nurture and grow.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

New Hope

Toan Nguyen, Garden Grove CA

New Hope will provide low-income housing and social support to families in Lincoln Park. New Hope offers childcare and after-school education programs to its residents. Located at the corner of Mission Road and Main Street, the site is surrounded by links to public transportation. This limit the use of personal vehicles and reduce Co2 emissions.

The majority of residents of New Hope work for local manufacturing companies, have low income, live in rental housing, and have children. Traffic in Lincoln Park is relatively light due to the availability of public transportation. New Hope has a hybrid program combining low-income housing, a daycare center, after-school education programs, community offices, and a bodega.

New Hope will provide residents with green spaces that connect the site to Lincoln Park and create a healthy environment. New Hope will create a healthy community at an affordable cost to its residents.

The typology of New Hope has been developed through a series of figure-ground studies that create multiple layers of space in plan and section. The garden promotes outdoor activity and serves as resource for the residents to cultivate fresh produce.

The exterior skin provides shading to south-facing units and provides a view of Lincoln Park by acting as a screen and shading device. The placement of outer and inner perforated façade panels creates a layered effect, revealing and concealing the life of the project, and achieving a unique expression of form and material.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Lincoln Park Art Center

Vi Vo, Sacramento CA

Lincoln Park Art Center is a new development on the park, and a programmatic connection to the Plaza de la Raza—an existing cultural, community center, and gallery display. The site presents complex spatial and cultural challenges.

It sits at the center of multiple junctions of zonings, economics, and culture. In response, the Art Center building is designed to respond to its surrounding with each space responding to the urban environment, the Plaza, and the lake. The cantilever over the lake is held up by three diagrid structures—housing activities and circulations. The structure represents the connecting tissue of the building’s program within itself and with the Plaza de la Raza. The Art Center overlooks its surrounding contexts with a public art garden at its center—exhibiting sculptural artworks. The new gallery on the ground level will double the existing art gallery of the Plaza. To begin the building life, the Plaza’s organization will invite ten local artists to live and work in the studio units. The living studio units are on the third and fourth level. They are designed to overlook the park and surrounding neighborhood—a perch for artists observe the lives of the neighborhood of Lincoln Heights. Their works will celebrate the community identity and of the park’s. The remaining ground level and the second level is then designed for the meandering public activity, with a small café at the end of the pavilion platform.

This space creates a negotiation of the building’s presence and the public space.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Garment Workers’ Union Hall and Museum

Alexander Wu, Taipei City Taiwan

Fast Fashion refers to trendy clothing mass produced at low costs made possible through the exploitation of the environment and garment workers. The extent of fast fashion’s inhuman practices is far-reaching. Workers are subjected to dehumanizing labor practices and health risks. Because of poverty and censorship, many laborers have no choice but to work in these sweatshops. Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) is home to some of the largest garment sweatshops in the United States. Numerous organizations have recorded statistics and produced reports on human rights violations, such as kidnapping and abuse, since the 1900s, with the latest high-profile case being the El Monte and Ross sweatshop exploits.

For my project, “Garment Workers’ Union Hall and Museum”, I aim to make a difference to the lives of the human beings who are subject to the exploitation of human rights inherent business model of fast fashion. My plan is to design a space for conversations for all parties involved in this business model, who are the corporations, the garment workers, and the consumers. With this understanding, I programmed my project as a union hall and a museum. The tone of which is dark tourism, referring to visiting places where some of the darkest events of human history have unfolded. I want my project to feel sublimed, sad, but at the same time, protected. To amplify my project statement, I place my building next door to the headquarters of Forever 21, located in DTLA.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

VITACENTER

Andres Carrillo, Huntington Beach CA

VitaCenter focuses on redefining the day-to-day human and animal relationships that exist within the urban context of East L.A. It is an animal care and adoption facility that is a point of exchange for anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric architectural space. It aims to endow autonomy to both its human and its animal users. VitaCenter achieves this by redefining how people, animals, and local diversity would use the space based upon their potential capabilities. Each space within the project is characterized by different scales, forms, voids, and materials. These qualities of space are especially apparent on the animal enclosure units, playrooms, and adoption areas. The result is a unique, humane space, where all creatures are respected and served according to their needs.

The 76,000 sq.ft program is composed of humane center that includes spaces for adoption, community events, veterinary services and retail. VitaCenter welcomes visitors, adopters, staff, volunteers who have a passion for caring animals while respecting their identity and their rights in human society.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Section Wendy Gilmartin: Wendy Gilmartin, AIA is a licensed architect and writer. Wendy was previously the Los Angeles partner at FAR frohn&rojas, with offices in Los Angeles, Berlin and Santiago, Chile, and project architect at Assembledge+ in Los Angeles. She holds an MArch degree from Rice University and owns and operates WGA (Wendy Gilmartin Architecture), a full-service architecture firm serving at the intersection of sites and cultures in underserved inland regions of Southern California and the Mojave Desert. Wendy sits on the Advisory Board of Directors for the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, and her writing has been published in The Los Angeles Times, LAWeekly, Landscape Architecture Magazine, The Houston Press, The Dallas Observer, KCET’s ARTBOUND, The Architect’s Newspaper and in the books Latitudes: An Angeleno’s Atlas (Heyday Publishers), and Best Practices (OHM Editions).

The Foundation of Commonwealth, Prosperity and Future

Nauryzbek Naurbekov, Shuchinsk Kazakhstan

It is no secret that there are tens of thousands of different cultures and nationalities on our planet. However, we have about 195 countries that mostly represent their own titular nation. Our human civilization is diverse with thousands of unique and authentic ethnicities and cultures that few people know about.

These cultures are forced to exist unknown, not to have their own land, the state language, and most importantly, not to have representation in the UN. The city of Boyle-Heights also has a one-vector development aimed at a specific demographic group. However, the central location of my site in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which is also located near LA river, lends perspective to the foundation. After all, the expansion of downtown LA to the south and the merger of the art district with the industrial district of the Boyle-Heights, will create a new modern area.

The main program of the center is primarily directed towards the small ethnic peoples who do not have a significant number in California. Thousands of different languages and traditions will be stored in this place, as well as the practice of mutual aid, respect and international affair. Anyone can learn any language and delve into any new culture, as well as taste any cuisine in the most important place of the building, namely the international multifunctional universal kitchen. Visiting such places will make people’s outlook on the world even wider, will maintain the recognition of minority cultures, and most importantly, will educate a new generation of cosmopolitans.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Community Sports Center for Girls & Young Women

Hannah Doan, Pomona CA

This will be a safe space for young women, from ages 13 to 25, to expand their interest, whether it be creativity or actively, is scarce throughout communities and rarely encouraged in the public school system. With the future pedestrian ways and green space, this project proposes a recreational space where young women’s creative and active interests and passions can be explored. It will be a collection of active spaces, such as skate parks, bouldering walls, rock climbing walls, kickboxing, weight lifting, etc. Due to the unique shape of the site, the active programmatic spaces are mainly on the ground floor, where the linear active spaces are stacked around and above the ground floor. This opens up the massing to have an open floor plan with, not only a view of the entire floor, but a view of the LA River and the distant skyline of Los Angeles.

With the intention to create a safe, creative, and active space for young women, there is an open floor plan. With the ability to see and view as many aspects of one’s surroundings creates a sense of accountability and security of the space. This type of atmosphere is achieved through the structural development and use of steel framing and a concrete column grid uplifting the massing above the ground floor.

Overall, integrating an uplifting and active space for young women into the site with a future of the LA River Master Plan, could support the future of the community.

Each element of the development is to ensure a safe and confident space for women to expand their interest or possible hang out space to meet new people.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Passive Recreational Center

Yeganeh Malouhi, Tehran Iran

Today we live in a rapidly aging society. Based on Administration for Community Living (ACL.gov) the number of adults, age 65 and older, in 2019, was 54.1 million. This population is projected to reach 80.8 million by 2040 and 94.7 million by 2060. This shift in the population pyramid means that traditional behavior towards senior care systems need to be reimagined.

We often see the elderly rejecting nursing homes and wanting more independence.

“Some people in their 80s reject senior housing because they don’t want to live with old people” says Stacey Burling in her article “Old and ageist”. That brings me to explore a building typology that does not house the elderly but helps them to come together and enjoy the spaces that they may not have at their homes.

This typology is to seek to become an accessible destination for a space that nurtures wellness while providing a sense of place and community for seniors.

That is to investigate a healthy and joyful leisure for the future of the elderly and go beyond a simple exercise and therapeutic space. Consequentially, spaces should offer personal, individualized options that address physical wellness, zero waste craft, education, social, recreational, spiritual, and selfreflective opportunities. The overall program must include all the requirements of creating a destination center for the senior community by using the warmth of traditional spaces combined with the modern practicality and aesthetics, but, having the flexibility of program in mind. To have a long-term sustainable project, flexible design must be the key. As technology and lifestyles change, the needs and requirements of the new generations aging into the user group will change as well. Therefore, spaces can’t afford to be functionally restrictive.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Regenerative Learning Center

Maribel Ruiz, Guadalajara Mexico

Located adjacent to the LA River, the site recognizes the history of the Los Angeles basin before the arrival of the first Europeans in the mid-1500s. Long before Los Angeles developed into a metropolitan sprawl with its freeways and gridded suburbs, the area was known for its grasslands, estuaries, and oak-covered foothills. It was a time when there was a perfect balance in the ecosystem, where fish were plentiful, and the river ran free with fresh water. The land was home to indigenous communities that lived in close relationship with the ecosystem and its natural processes.

The center is a non-profit learning and research space for designers, professionals, and anyone interested in beginning or furthering their knowledge of sustainable and regenerative design. The site encourages pedestrian and bicycle access along the LA River, which will work in conjunction with the future LA River Master Plan. Focused on promoting socio-environmental practices, the building uses ancient construction technologies that can avert the imminent collapse of our natural resources. The building takes the form of an earthwork embedded within the existing terrain. In order to do so, excavation of the soils is reused to sculpt and raise retaining and load-bearing walls made of rammed earth; an ancient sustainable construction method. This construction materials is lowcost effective, and provides great thermal mass as it absorbs heat during the day and releases it overnight. With the site located in a highly industrial and noisy area, rammed earth is also an ideal soundproofing material.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Quiubo

Ivonne Murillo, Pomona CA

In the overflowing neighborhood of Boyle Heights, there resides a community center for all to join. There is need for a community center to exist here because many adolescents need a safe place and recreational one to find themselves as they are growing up. Whatever they choose to be, it is up to them. Life is like a playground were we run around until the sun goes down.

This project will tackle the site context which is surrounded in a heavy manufacturing and few residential zones. The building will flourish as a sign of hope for those youths who still have a future to impact their life and surroundings. This building will consist of multi-purpose rooms, indoor courts, recreational fun, activity rooms to target those who want to expand their brains.

There is playfulness at hand within the programming to engage the user.

There is a need for provocation since many youths are not graduating which will affect their need to succeed. The zoning, M3-1-RIO-CUGO, allows for a community center to emerge from the heavy industrial zone. It will help improve the Los Angeles River Project to revitalize the area between to reconnect. This building will act as a connector along the river. Moreover, the community center will help reestablish the community of Boyle Heights in order to preserve the neighborhood from gentrification. Like a sorting cube, it would help the youths develop skills which would mold their knowledge. The building would fill the gaps with spaces provided for all.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Creative Work Center for Women

Daniel Alejandro Aguilera, Ciudad de México MX

After the covid-19 pandemic, thousands of people, especially women, were affected by the huge amount of job losses due to the new regulations. The Creative Work Center for Women is dedicated to women who need and want to work but cannot afford to since they cannot leave their children alone. The CWCW is divided into three sections: public services, daycare services, and maker spaces. The organization of the program begins with the public services being at the ground floor, followed by the daycare on the first floor, and above the daycare two extra floors dedicated to the maker workshops; fashion & textiles (second floor) and arts and crafts (third floor).

The project is designed according to three stages: the first stage is the protection and enhancement of natural elements such as sound, light, and wind, the second stage is made up of a series of moments of compression and expansion to elevate the experience throughout the site and the third stage is the control of different densities of green spaces for a healthier environment.

The materials of the buildings were thought of as a statement of dedication to environmentally sustainable design. From the use of structural components like cross-laminated timber (CLT) to the skin of the building with metal and copper standing seams, the selection celebrates and encourages the use of sustainable design.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Artisan Dreamscape

Vincent Nguyen, Fountain Valley CA

The term ‘artisan’ refers to a skilled craft worker that makes or creates objects purely by hand. In a way, this has become a lost art to certain degrees. Until recently, society had become accustomed to the idea of consumerism and purchasing readily available items. Nowadays, however, people are growing tired of this trend and instead, long for a one of a kind product. Artisans, or makers, find themselves fighting to escape a workforce that focuses on procuring objects in masses and instead, desire ownership over their own projects.

This project is situated in the southernmost part of Boyle Heights where there exists a multifaceted site condition. The building is intersected by the LA River, railways, and industrial structures. Artisan Dreamscape will set out to create a sanctuary for master craftspeople, local artists, and local business owners to gather to work alongside one another as they create their products. Not only will they be able to ply their trades, but there will be additional dedicated facilities for educational purposes. Young adults within the community will be able to visit and learn a trade that piques their interests as a way of giving back to the community. Much of the Boyle Heights community are craftsmen or some sort of laborers and this accounts for the majority of the workforce. Considering how underserved the community is as well, many residents struggle with “intolerable working conditions” and so this project proposal can help bridge people and their craft. Artisans seeking joy in the work that they do will find a safe haven in this project as they discover and learn from themselves and other craftspeople.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Library and Resource Center

Sandee Deogaygay

This project is a library in conjunction with a resource center. The project’s purpose is to create a safe environment for younger people, especially younger mothers.

The project is meant to encourage and empower people to follow their passion.

This overall form was derived from the notion of two forms interlocking, much like how the library and resource center are interconnected in the space. This concept of interlocking is emphasized by the large staircase in the center that highlights the verticality of the space. Also due to the size of the stairs, it also acts as a secondary seating and hang out space.

The resource center contains workshops to learn new skills, a donation center that allows for necessities to be more accessible, a day care to help people with younger children, and a computer lab to give a workspace to those who are in need of one. The library is meant to enhance education and give people a place to study. The children’s floor was meant to stimulate exploration and discovery within the space. The two floors above the children’s spaces are meant to encourage collaboration with its study rooms, various seating and reading areas, and large outdoor space. The top floor is a place of peace and quiet. This space was created for those who find peace while working in more silent spaces.

The library and resource center is meant to encourage and empower people. It is meant to give people the tools to move forward, whether it is with their career, passion, education, or family.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Women’s Small Business & Community Center

Ashley Morales

Boyle Heights faces numerous obstacles relating to gentrification, climate change, and financial stability over the next several years. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many women and families took the opportunity to begin their own businesses and lean into crafting from their homes. Women often carry the burden of childcare, domestic work, and family planning.

With the chance to run their own business, the women in Boyle Heights need a safe, both climate as well as interpersonal, sustainable, and welcoming environment to sell, trade, network and craft. A marketplace could be critical to creating financial stability, opportunity, and community ownership.

Childcare is as important to many families as having a job. A play area in proximity and view of their mothers, aunts, neighbors, and friends would alleviate the stress of knowing where children are in the area, what they are doing, who they are with, and how safe they may be. From elementary school students to high school students, the opportunity to be a part of the new wave of work within one structure will create a tighter bond between active community members and bring young people into a world of designing their own futures.

A new marketplace and workspace will allow occupants to focus solely on their new ventures, surrounded by like-minded individuals and varying skill sets. It could also create safer boundaries between work-life and home-life, and act as a permanent place for Boyle Heights’ residents growing, informal economy that has kept them going for years.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Community Center for the Performing Arts

Olivia Nilges, Redding CA

The community of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles county is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the city. The population is ninety-three percent Latino, with a people group dedicated to their culture, community, and place in the city of Los Angeles. The community is made up of activists young and old, as well as key members of anti-gentrification and Latino representation organizations. Taking this demographic into consideration, it is critical to create a place of community, safety, inclusion, and representation in the design, creation, and development of my senior project. My project is a community center centered around the performing arts, which gives young and old creatives a place to express themselves, as well as a gathering place for the community of Boyle Heights to connect with each other, learn, create, and express themselves using resources that are meant to empower and protect.

The purpose of the community center being centered around the performing arts is to engage two parts of the community: those who are already are aspiring creatives, willing to come together to learn, teach, and perform, and those who wish to learn how to draw, sing, act, dance, or create with all ages of the community. There is an inherent value that lies in learning to create art, and I want to create a space for the people of Boyle Heights to find solace and community with one another. Safety is of high importance within the design of the project, as the community of Boyle Heights deserves a space to feel safe, secure and engaged within the building.

The community areas of this project are delegated into various branches, such as performing spaces, studio workshops, individually-oriented areas as well as group-oriented areas, learning/classroom situated rooms, and intentional circulation that encourages moments of reflection and intentionality between people.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Art Center for the Community

Naz Ismael

The aim of this project is to design an all-inclusive environment for both selfdevelopment as well as community growth. It will provide various spaces to learn, participate, preform, and enjoy art. The Arts Center is a way to highlight how architecture can help create a space that showcases art in a way where everyone can apply their interests. Combining a wide range of art forms, such as dancing with painting, and sculptors with musicians, the Arts Center intends to provide a range of platforms in which visitors are free to explore the relationship of different arts in a way that leaves an impression on the community.

The main approach to organizing these components includes creating a building that is made of three components itself symbolic of the three parts of the program and bringing them together. The three masses are organized following a sun path diagram this offers an opportunity to create separate spaces that while they are all joined and are part of the same building, they are in several directions and various heights allowing them to open to different sides and offer different views.

When it comes to art practice as well as teaching there is a blend between private spaces and public spaces to allow the individuals to come together and go in different directions whenever needed. Bigger communal spaces are included in addition to the courtyard located on the ground floors which offers a medium for the visitors and members of the community to socialize with others of similar interests. The workshops located on the upper levels create a platform for interaction in which a conversation could be initiated between the different user groups.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Skilled Workshop & Community Center

Xavier Salas, Downey CA

Located in the industrial district of Boyle Heights, the site rests adjacent and below Olympic Blvd. The surrounding lots are composed of recycling centers, warehouses, and other processing manufacturers. This project will serve as the first of many expanding projects along the LA River, that aim to increase access to public amenities and transform the greater area into a more public friendly environment. The amenities along the river are all woven together by a network of bike trails. This innovative approach to urban design in LA provides the opportunity to combat the increasing sprawl. The Boyle Heights Area in particular struggles with crime, poverty, education, and access to green space.

Community Centers have been a reliable method of providing young adults and community members with extracurricular activities that not only motivate them but enrich their education. This community center will be a major stopping point along the network of bike trails providing bike repair, parts for sale, and a paint shop. The center is supported through LATTC and CalTrans Grants under the Clean California Grant, that aims to benefit underserved communities across all LA Districts. The center will provide skilled workshops and classes in an effort to provide quality education and promote economic mobility. The Center also provides plentiful greenspace and caters to pedestrians and cyclists.

The LA River Master Plan has provided a medium to begin implementing more site conscious projects and green space. Each program within this project aims to create a safe, active, and diverse space.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Greenhouse and Community Marketplace

Sharifeh Abdallah, Amman Jordan

Along the Los Angeles river; in a site located in a heavily industrial area, the lack of accessibility to green open areas and organic source of food creates a real challenge for local people in the Boyle Heights Community to have easy access to healthy and organic food and maintain their health and wellbeing. Therefore, this project is a selfsufficient vertical indoor farming and marketplace; intends to provide a model for sustainable design strategies and education that inspires immersive visitor engagement.

Looking at the future development along the L.A river and the potential of integrating green architecture that provides a unique opportunity for equally public access to the river; on a macro level; this project addresses the food security challenges faced by growing urban populations, and help the urban community in social and economic ways by stimulating the local economy, and supporting youth and young generation from the age of 15 to 25 by offering them access to specific educational workshops and training programs that can increase their well-being while giving them access to on-site job opportunities. However, as Boyle Heights is supported by The California Endowment under its Building Healthy Communities (BHC) initiative; on a micro level, this project will give the local community members access to healthy food, and allow good mentally and physical youth development while maintaining the local community’s ecosystem.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

The Pit Community Farming Center

Lorenzo Tayag, Anaheim CA

This project is a demonstration farm which also doubles as a community garden in order to lessen the degrees of separation between the community and their resources. This project is located on E. 12th St. in Boyle Heights off of Sante Fe. The building sits on an infill site and is extruded vertically. The roof is angled 20 degrees towards the south facing side of the building in order to capture the most amount of direct sunlight throughout the day, at all times of the year.

The floors of the building are organized around an atrium and are stacked in a way to optimize the light entering into the building. The atrium is the main lighting strategy to allow light to penetrate through the building at various times of the day. The main procession for users of the project follows the stairway which curves through the atrium of the building. Programming such as the retail space, the office, and the classroom follow the circulation of the stairs, while the rest of the programming consists of growing areas.

The floor structures of the building are calculated to support the weight of wet soil and planters in the grow areas.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Midway Market and Fitness Club

Isaiah Rojas, Long Beach CA

This project is known as the Midway Market & Fitness Hub and is located at 1607 S Perrino Pl along the LA River. As the city of Los Angeles begins to densify, we see more and more buildings taking over our public spaces, minimizing the green areas for physical and or outdoor activities. Additionally, our low socioeconomic communities have been withheld of the same access to fresh produce and healthy store options that are provided to the higher socio-economic neighborhoods. Having lived in cities where our options are described as food deserts, we find ourselves at a disadvantage in being able to maintain a longer healthy life. This project explores how architecture and the built environment, can make an impact on an individual’s physical health and the community by providing the necessary resources for one to maintain their health.

By allowing the development to become an extension of, both the future LA River Master Plan and future Boyle Heights community plan, it will become a hub providing the necessities for one to improve their physical health with healthy food options and space for activities. Both education and action are key factors in being able to begin the process of restoring these communities, placing them on the path toward a more sustainable lifestyle. Architecturally the buildings use a series of mass walls that are so prevalent, acting as a grand feature while being part of the main structure for the development. Each floor package of this project has exposed ceiling structure with an open we steel truss with a metal decking system. Being in and industrial area, the project remains true to its surroundings carry on this industrial style on the interior. These exposed Structural and MEP elements help to highlight the nature of the neighborhood and warehousing history of Los Angeles.

Large Openings on the North façade allow views to the LA skyline while the outdoor spaces integrate seamlessly with the LA River Master Plan improvements. The project is best described as being formal and pragmatic yet deliberate and tectonic.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Centro Cultural Pasado y Presente Past and Present Cultural Center

Brandice Reza, La Habra CA

The ability to know one’s community and celebrate the culture of a group and their individual members is a gift. It is a great benefit to have a placewhere people feel safe and can express their communal and individual cultures. In an area like Boyle Heights where the cultures ahve been so rish as generations have gone by, there is an even greater need to celebrate the history of the area. Given that the area continues to change as time marches on, there is something that does not change; the resilience and strenght of the community.

In order to add to the strength of the community, the goal of this project is to provide a space where people of the community can come together. In this placethey will be free to discuss plans about the community, hots various classes for its community members, host celebratory events and be a haven for connection. Located on the intersection of the LA River and E. Washington Boulevard., this location is well-siturated in the industrial area of Boyle Heights, where generations of laborers have worked inthis area and continue to this day.

The project is intended to create connections not only between the community and its members but within the area around it. The connections intended for pedestrians along E. Washington Blvd. and to those who will travel along the future LA River pathwill allow those who pass through the project to witness an ambiance of community and the cultures that the community safeguards.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Boyle Heights Veterans Resource Center

Frank Ruedas

The overall objective to a veteran resource center is to create a purposeful design as a community hub that is easily accessible to veterans located in the downtown and Boyle Heights area. The center would act as a bridge to help veterans acclimate back into society. The center would serve as a home for a broad range of veteran services—including counseling, adult education, and other government run programs for veterans. In my research I found that learning centers created an environment of progression, Involvement in communities, and opportunities for individuals seeking help. Spaces like auditoriums can be used to support events for local veterans. Programs like a flexible banquet hall space, can be used for community events. Besides classrooms, tutoring, and writing centers, a dedicated gallery can serve as a platform to highlight present-day exhibitions of art, culture, and performance relevant to the military-connected community. Programs like memorial and honorary spaces for members that have served in the general area could create a sense of community. The use of this building can also assist in transforming the sites under- utilized streetscape into a vibrant urban promenade.

The multipurpose project will serve the community and use architectural methods to knits together the distinct identities of public, academic, and military life.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Section Bob Alexander: Robert Alexander is a native of southern California and a proud alumnus of Cal Poly Pomona. As a professor, he has spent much of his tenure organizing and developing the department’s foundational curriculum. Over that time, Alexander has led researchbased seminars and design studios including an investigation of drive-up and drivethru architecture and a studio that questioned notions of architectural authorship and its impact on representation called “Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions”. These studios and seminars formed the basis for his current research into the development of midcentury fast-food architecture and its impact on urbanism in southern California. Other projects have included the interactive web-based textbook, Foundations of Architectural Design, published in 2018, and his design work which has been featured in a variety of publications including the Journal for Architectural Education, the LA Forum Newsletter, Japan Architect, the Boston Globe, and Evolo Magazine. In addition to teaching and research, Alexander serves as the director of the College of Environmental Design’s Archive and Special Collections and as the principal of the environmental design collaborative bobCAT, which he founded with his partner Catherine Burce in 2007, to explore the intersections between landscape and buildings through research and practice.

The Red Light Automotive Technology Department

Cristian Cedillo, Anaheim CA

Los Angeles is one of the most popular cities where many car enthusiasts meet but there is no space designated for this car culture. LATTC’s Automotive Department can provide a space where car meets can be held as well as provide a community space where anyone can work on their vehicle.

There are often situations where there is no space provided for new and old car enthusiasts to work on their cars since not everyone has a garage or space to work on their car. The DIY culture is growing and many people want to do car work on their own due to money and also to learn how to do simple things such as an oil change. This new space can provide so many hands-on people an opportunity to try and attempt new challenges with the tools and space provided.

The design would grab any pedestrian’s or driver’s attention due to the thousand of taillights placed at the front of the building but right below will be the primary advanced technology workspaces. These spaces will give any observant at street level a taste of how people work on cars, as well as the many technological advances that are used to not only build vehicles but to improve them. Right behind these specific work areas, there is an unstructured narrow workspace where one can bring their vehicle and work on it or meet with other car enthusiasts and have some coffee on Saturday morning.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

LATTC Residence

Ghazi A Ghazi, Baghdad Iraq

LATTC Student Housing demonstrates a new change and a response that will benefit the student population in many ways. This facility will be able to support students to focus on studies, network with creative individuals, and develop new innovations. Through this process, the graduation and transfer rate among the student population will increase due to the life improvements that are caused by this building. Engagement with the main campus will also be an important part of the students’ daily lives. Going to class, meeting new classmates, eating lunch with friends, studying with room / building mates, and working on projects in shared spaces are all part of the experience to achieve a successful educational journey.

Accessibility to campus technology and equipment will also be unchallenged as housing will be part of campus. Students studying Architectural Technology and Design & Media Arts will be able to use studio space to work on projects and develop new designs and ideas that can transform their lives. Students that are studying Culinary Arts can use the shared kitchen on each level to produce new recipes and food art. Business and Civic Engagement majors can use the library or outdoor areas to study, alongside those who are studying Liberal Arts & Science. The interior courtyard on the ground level will also become a major part of student circulation to access shared spaces, and to enter or exit the building.

This courtyard will be the main place of interaction for students as they work and socialize in this large open space. Altogether, LATTC Form will provide multiple spaces for student’s to achieve success with a sufficient living environment.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

The City Oasis

Reem Alsoltani, Los Angeles CA

A building with multisensory effect to the inhabitants in the midst of a commercialized area is possible with proper planning on how to place a landscaped open courtyard and pedestrain only street require proper planning proper planning. In designing a building with environments that would promote healthy well-being, designers should look into the impact of the human senses on the surroundings. There is a need for understanding the effect of multisensory atmosphere and environment that affects people, which contribute to cognitive and behavioral learning (Spence).

To design a building with a multisensory effect on the inhabitants in a highly commercialized area is possible through proper planning and understanding the high need for a refuge space from the busy industrial communities. This proposed design will provide multilevel outdoor spaces for users to use and enjoy as well as bringing the community together in an artfull, educational and social space for different events that can be taken place at a safe environment.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Unraveling and Mending A Reconciliation of Urban Leftover Space

Junhong Wen, Guangzhou City China

Through the inevitability urban development, large infrastructures were created ruthlessly. Huge scars tore the city into fragmented sections, creating visible and invisible socioeconomic gaps. Urban leftover space was generated, a factor in our build environment that cannot be ignored, nor it should be left behind.

In search of the coexistence with consequential leftover space, Junction Daycare Center was called upon for the expansion of the Los Angeles Trade Tech College (LATTC) as a supplementary program. Aligning with the linear nature of the operation of the daycare center, the building design is encapsulating the ever merging lane of the adjacent elevated freeway. A marriage of two such polar opposite programs was intentional. The safe program coupled with the underpass of the freeway that are often deemed to be program-unfriendly. This project is looking for reconciliation with infrastructure. Undeniably, site-specific problems were raised due to the monumental infrastructure. City-mandated buffers are meant to set a safe distance from building and freeway. Placement of the botanical garden in the buffer zone helps mitigate some of the site issues, while celebrated as a tourist destination — the sculpture park lying under the freeway.

In the future, urban leftover spaces will be challenging subjects as our overpopulated city grows. This project provides a possible way of thinking as we approach the near future.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Connect +

Ying Gao, China

The project aims to expand and integrate the Los Angeles Trade Technical College campus into the community by developing a science museum and laboratory. The site is across Washington Blvd from the campus, and in order to provide students and the public with convenient and safe access to the museum and labs, the project will span the street serving as a bridge that connects not only the two sides but also the Metro station below. The project is developed by analyzing bridgetype buildings and forms of science museums to integrate the function of the science museum with the physical building so that the building itself would have science meaning. The form and the skylight can be the tools to shape the science museum. For this reason, the project combines science laboratories, exhibition space, experimental workshop space, multifunctional space. The space will host building science exhibitions and provide experimental activities to the public in the future, and then visitors can experience the information that they just learned in the public laboratories workshop which allows visitors to operate and experience the wonder of science to stimulate people’s interest in science. The museum also can offer LATTC students to guide the public through scientific workshops and lectures to cultivate students’ innovative and practical ability. The actual building will become a bridge, which connects the city and people, connects people to people, connects science and people, and connects opportunity and possibility.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Elderly and Youth Community Center

George Jang, Fullerton CA

The project is a recreational center withing a park for the city of Los Angeles in the Historic South Los Angeles district. The recreational center is for at-risk youth and the elderly community that is traditionally underserved with access to a safe public space filled with after school activities and beautiful greenery.

An analysis of the area within the site shows that surrounding environment lacks spaces that have a green area, a safe space for pedestrians to relax, and for people to meet and come together. The recreation center aims to give relief to the downtown industrial complex while responding to its context. The project packs the derived program spaces taken from an analysis of all the Los Angeles city parks, recreational centers, and senior centers into one core element that will blur the area between inside activities being taken place with the outside pedestrian community so that it will embrace the local community and create a sanctuary.

The design looks at the site context as well as its needs. The location of the site is on Washington Blvd which is a busy street that parallels the 10 freeway. An area surrounded by two major highways dense in traffic throughout most of the day even on the weekends. Traffic is especially dense during the time the surrounding middle and high school is concluded. By placing a building within the busy intersection, it allows an area where teenage children can congregate and relax afterschool before heading home. The recreational center also has a goal which is to promote physical and mental wellness through its various fitness-oriented programing.

The project has elements that hyper focuses its designed spaces for the youth and elderly but recognizes that the community is much more than those two specific groups and provides program that is adaptable to a wider spectrum of people.

The hopes by doing this is to try and create a supportive spectrum of people that will come together as a local community and develop despite their differences.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Trade Tower To Continue, Not Impose . . .

Daniel Vazquez, Santa Fe Springs CA

Located across LATTC, the proposed project is aimed to provide a secure space for the community to gather and attend classes. The project program is intended to be an addition to LATTC. This project is a performing arts school that consists of music, dance, and theater classes. The project is not only aimed for LATTC students, but it is also designed to allow the surrounding community to gather and participate in the provided programs. This project provides the public with multiple gathering spaces such as the performing space, restaurant, workshops, and the inner plaza. These spaces are meant to allow the community to interact with students attending the school. The project is designed to allow the ground floor to become free and open, this is done to give space for the public to interact with the project and to give them a secure space. The inner plaza of the project is meant to become a space for the community and the students to perform and allow the passing by pedestrians to view these performances.

These two spaces become similar yet different in their own unique ways. The program layout is divided into two separate parts, the public and the education.

These spaces ultimately become connected with bridges that go across the two programs. This was done to allow a sense of connection between the public and private. The project investigates the idea of inside vs outside, public vs private, and large vs small to create different spaces for different programs. The project uses the program to separate inside vs outside in order to create a sense of privacy.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Reclayming

Sarra Starbird, Pasadena CA

The Los Angeles Technical Trade college in South Central LA encourages growth of Design/Media, Construction Sciences, and Culinary Arts, to name a few.

Los Angeles is home to a largely growing ceramics community, one of which demand is outweighing LATTC’s current department facilities. By reclaiming the adjacent AT&T data center building projected to be moved due to expansion, this reuse will house the education and exploration of emerging ceramicists.

Prominent Los Angeles ceramicist Doyle Lane was known for utilizing tactile glazes within his ceramic murals. In honor of this prominent figure, the Doyle Lane Cultural Center for CEramics Design and Production is an expansion to the LATTC curriculum, one that is feuling the flame for ceramics expolration. Nested adjacent tot he Metro Blue Line and the intersection of the 10 and 110 Freeway, LATTC campus has strong ties to the Los Angeles community. I am proposings to adapt the remaining non-campus building on the LATTC Campus block. This will help unify the college in its relation to the campus’s main street: West Washington Boulevard.

The heart of this project creates a tie between differing backgrounds and crafts, linking passion through flame. This project aims to engage the Los Angeles ceramics community and to create an outlet for the craft, sculpturally and architecturally.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Exit Through the Courtyard

Francisco Reyes, Puebla, Mexico

The purpose for introducing an art institution in partnership with MOCA and its Professional Development Workshops at Schools and Contemporary Art Start program, is to bring art exposure to the LATTC area and its surrounding community. For instance, a program similar to that of the Broad’s Diversity Apprenticeship Program or DAP, could be made possible within the spaces of the proposed building. An arrangement like DAP could create career opportunities for people from underrepresented communities and a building where students could learn about the trade of art handling and preparation is a valuable resource. Moreover, this institution could open doors to individuals without undergraduate degrees by creating direct exposure to an established museum.

This part of Los Angeles has a demographic which is of lower income working class and mostly foreign born. A population like this could benefit from learning about a creative career path that is not typically encouraged to be pursued; at the same time, and over the long run, the facility could be the resource needed to bring diversity into the art profession. Furthermore, an area lacking cultural attractions and mainly dominated by commercial zoning could benefit from a project such as an art institution. Therefore, this facility is intended to be the catalyst that culturally begins to shape the area and gives MOCA a new location to test art installations and display artworks in its collection that are more provocative.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

The Belly of South Central

Josue Navarro Lazalde, San Luis Obispo CA

Markets were once the basis of town formation, and their role as places where food was sold has been one of the fundamental characteristics of early settlement.

Today, South Central’s zoning codes and policies physically separate activities revolving around food. This project seeks to carve out public space and adds to the built urban fabric that sets the stage for social interaction centered on food.

Grand Mercado focuses on the new role of markets in Los Angeles. Not as a place of consumerism like the strip malls that line the streets of Los Angeles, but as a space of convivial interactions. The proposal calls for the submersion of the adjacent Metro Blue line, reigniting the site into a central node in the city.

It combines public and semi-public spaces ranging from street vendor carts to tenant vendor stalls. Alongside these spaces exists moments for rest, leisure, and conviviality. It pushes the warehouse typology that uses the space frame as a way to span, utilizes the plenum space to create areas for interaction and service spaces, and serves as a source of shading for the South Central residents. By reconnecting food-related activities to land use, the project aims to reinforce social interaction and thus conviviailty centered on food.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

LA’s Front Yard

Jaylene Sanchez, Compton CA

When an area is identified as a food desert, it means that people living there have difficultyaccessing healthy, nutritious food. There can still be fast food restaurants and liquor stores;however, none of these options offer nearby residents nourishing meals that maintain goodhealth or speak to their diverse cultural backgrounds.

Los Angeles Trade Technical College has an existing culinary arts school that is embedded inthe middle of the college campus. LA’s Front Yard would replace the culinary arts building andbe situated across the street from LATTC. It would be a culinary arts center that brings a pieceof home to the community through the front yard. This space will serve as a community gardenand as a kitchen.

It will function at a larger scale where the community can come together as awhole to learn about good nutrition. However, accessing healthy food is a basic necessity thatshould already be provided. The community garden is only addressing half of the problem. Thenext step is giving people the space to learn about good nutrition and establishing a goodrelationship with food. LA’s Front Yard has two formal classrooms on the ground floor while alsoa multipurpose area to host informal learning spaces. The inclusion of a restaurant to theprogram allows for LATTC culinary arts students to put what they learn into practice in a realsetting, further enhancing their knowledge and experience.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Monroe Moment, Center of Design

Issa Sidra,

Designing a space which aims to connect education and merchant spaces while adding to the surrounding community and connecting to the existing culture of Downtown Los Angeles raises many questions in the process. What are the ways in which architecture can evoke a sense of community and welcomeness without sacrificing the design? In which ways can form and materiality impact this experience? Bridging together different aspects of LATTC with the community by creating both an educational facility and a merchant space allows two different publics to interact; the student body and the community.

By creating towers which house different programs and physically bridging them together to create social interactions between the programs where those collisions are carefully calculated to happen allows the two publics to share the spaces while keeping a sense of safety and privacy for students. This, along with incorporating different types of study spaces and studios will have a large impact on the way the project is utilized. This project aims to provide all the necessities any student pursuing Fashion related majors at LATTC may need in one space. The different layers of transparency will allow for these spaces to vary and provide an adequate education for all those involved. In designing the project and developing a massing strategy, many of the moves relied on creating a seamless transition between the street and the building. The public facing program is concentrated around the South facade of the project, connecting to Washington Blvd and the Metro. Transitioning into the more private spaces leads the user up the building to the upper levels and caters to students in a different way than the ground floor.

The primary vertical circulation is centered in each of the ground level masses. It leads up through the designated atriums and provides views of the other users.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Sisyphus’s Theater LATTC Construction Lab and Recreation Center

Noah Mora, Pacifica CA

Amidst a deluge of self-proclaimed “new” architecture, existing architecture that was once technologically advanced and revolutionary is rendered obsolete. This “new” architecture that responds to the immediate needs of its developers is eventually outdated and outperformed by its successors in a vicious and rapid cycle of construction and demolition. The eternal and never-ending has been cast aside in favor of the quick and disposable.

To design never-ending architecture is to stage a space of perpetual selfcreation. Such a space would be restless and skittish, in the sense that it would be disorderly and never prepared to settle upon preordained rules or boundaries that might eventually render itself superseded. The proposed project aspires to be a never-ending theater hosting present and future architectural events, a building that is perpetually reconfiguring itself while educating others in the procedure. Its cast and crew are the students and technology of LATTC, its audience are the people of Southeast Los Angeles.

The hypothesis that arises: how to stage a coexistence of diverse activities and spaces that allows for a reconfigurable building to adapt to unforeseeable technological advancements and user demands, while keeping its core principles and contextual responsibility unscathed in infinite future iterations.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Centerstage/Backstage School of Performng Arts

Rita Jirjees, Baghdad Iraq

Located across LATTC, the proposed project is aimed to provide a secure space for the community to gather and attend classes. The project program is intended to be an addition to LATTC. This project is a performing arts school that consists of music, dance, and theater classes. The project is not only aimed for LATTC students, but it is also designed to allow the surrounding community to gather and participate in the provided programs. This project provides the public with multiple gathering spaces such as the performing space, restaurant, workshops, and the inner plaza. These spaces are meant to allow the community to interact with students attending the school. The project is designed to allow the ground floor to become free and open, this is done to give space for the public to interact with the project and to give them a secure space. The inner plaza of the project is meant to become a space for the community and the students to perform and allow the passing by pedestrians to view these performances.

The project investigates the idea of inside vs outside, public vs private, and large vs small to create different spaces for different programs. The project uses the program to separate inside vs outside in order to create a sense of privacy. Additionally, the program is designed to allow students to look inside other classrooms while traveling throw the project. The project uses two types of façades, concrete panels, and steel louvers. Concrete panels are being used for the public side to allow the performing space to become solid. On the other hand, steel louvers are being used on the education side to allow light to penetrate inside these spaces.

Different shapes are being used in this façade that were derived from the overall form. Small parts are being subtracted from the louvers in order to hide some parts of the program to the outside viewer. This portion of the project uses the idea of the theater curtain to create the dynamic façade for this performing arts school.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Section Andri Luescher: Andri Luescher studied Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich.

From 2008 until 2018 he worked at Johnston Marklee and Associates in Los Angeles. He was the project lead on residential, commercial, and cultural projects and oversaw the Menil Drawing Institute project in Houston Texas. He has been teaching at Cal Poly Pomona as an adjunct faculty since 2018. The same year he established the firm Schneider Luescher.

Library of Intersections

Alexis Alicea, Santa Ana CA

This project is a combination of a library and social services building to provide space for the community of Macarthur Park and the surrounding Westlake area to gather and have open access to resources for learning and growth.

The library is traditional in providing quiet space for people to study that may not be available at home. At the same time, it can also be a hub for accessible education and community gatherings. The interlocking structure of the building provides it users with flexible layouts that can be changed overtime based on their need. It attempts to accommodate a variety of users which results in large open spaces to welcome noise and interaction, and smaller more intimate spaces for privacy. On each level, large circular openings connect the building and progress in scale and orientation up the entire structure, making it so at different moments in the building you can experience the same forms in different ways.

At the ground floor of the building, the space is entirely open to the street.

Anyone can come onto the lot and use the space for events or partake in services organized by the library. The organization of the project in relationship to the park invites the users to either stop and rest or walkthrough as they please without obstruction as an extension of the open public space.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Westlake Public Library and Daycare

Robert Ambriz, La Puente CA

The project’s site is situated on the intersection of S. Alvarado St. and Wilshire Blvd., in front of MacArthur Park, where the area around the park mirrors its public nature.

Right in front of the site is an outdoor swap meet, where the street life is most present around the area, and adjacent to the project is the Westlake Theatre, which rests as a historic structure. Thus, the intent of the project became to reflect the public identity of the site, and serve the community. The programs of the building are community spaces, a daycare, and a library. The levels closest to the ground are those dedicated to the community as a whole, as that’s where the public auditorium is situated. The public auditorium is found at the subterranean level with a double height space, open to the ground level. This enables the space to connect visually to the outside. Above those levels is the daycare, with the outdoor activities space found above the indoor activities. The program starts to become the library as the daycare becomes the children’s library for the levels above it. The library levels alternate between double heights on the ends facing the park, to give that end of the building a greater sense of being open. The project was given a sense of openness to the park by giving it a glass façade though out its south and west facing facades, alternating concrete panels on its elevations to give the project a sense of being opened towards the end of the park. Louvres were added to both facades for shading. A third façade was created for the project to both create a plaza for the public-creating a connection to the outdoor swap meet- as well as to provide opportunity for the project to interact with its neighboring building, the Westlake Theatre. This “wedge” dictated the organization of program, structure, etc.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Social Exchange

Jose Arce, Pomona CA

Libraries have always been a social space of interaction. To continue creating social libraries, we must adapt the spaces for flexibility and the growth of the community. Macarthur Park is home to a variety of diverse people, from homeless to south and central American immigrants. The city of Westlake was built on the culture of these diverse communities. As the city continues to grow these groups are being pushed out because barriers such as affordability and language differences have continued to rise creating a strong division.

The building is intended to support and provide services for the immigrant communities to work, play and educate themselves. As change is constantly happening, these groups need services to help them adjust to the deep barriers in the city. I am proposing a service building that will provide these communities with evolving opportunities to flourish in the growing city. The library will serve as a social and adaptable space that provides the community the education and resources for better opportunities.

The Arch type can be seen as a link of the past and future within the context of the city. The arches’ purpose is to be used aesthetically for the fascade, to program the spaces and to become the structural system of the building. The Arches are used as a form of providing the users flexibility within the adaptations of the program. On most occasions it is a catalyst that promotes exchange, connection, and activity. The span of the arches allows for the flexibility to create moments that are more intimate and others that are more social. On the ground floor, the span of the arch programs the spaces as an extension for the street vendors to provide them with healthier and safer working conditions. The arches and exterior spaces create a connection back to the urban fabric of the city and Macarthur Park.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

The Alto Cultural Center

Justina Atalla, Cairo Egypt

This project combines a cultural center with a street vendors market to bring together elements that make up the culture of the Westlake city in a building that allows the public as well as the residents of the city to express their culture through artistic expression and performance.

The cultural center will focus mainly on music, dance performance, and artistic expressions. Spaces such as dance studios, individual and group music practice rooms, artists’ studios, and DIY workshops will provide members of the community with a place to create art, engage in musical performances or simply practice playing with a musical instrument. Additionally, the project will aim to act as an extension of the street vendors by providing vendors who are struggling with food and health permits with a space to safely sell their merchandise without fear of having their permits revoked. Such space will act as either a temporary space for vendors dealing with permit issues or as a permanent space for those looking for the opportunity to grow their businesses.

As art and culture are always evolving, the project with attempt to provide a flexible design of space that can easily be adapted to the needs of future artists and culture. Ultimately, the goal this project hopes to achieve is to bring members of the community together to partake in and celebrate culture manifested through arts and performances.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Westlake Fire Station and Community Center

Emanuel Cardenas, Covina CA

The Westlake neighborhood is home to a large population of newly settled immigrants of Latino ethnic backgrounds. Due to the nature of living in a foreign space, there is a need for certainty and comfort. My proposed fire station and community center provide a space for reassurance and a sense of establishing trust. It brings optimism and serves as a building block for the neighborhood. The two distinct types of space provide a variety of services. The fire station houses fire fighters and their equipment, while the community center provides spaces that allow the public to partake in recreational, educational, and communal activities to improve their well-being. The building gives the fire fighters and the community opportunities to interact and allows them to gain insight from the other’s perspective.

Because the two programs are rarely placed together in a single building, an investigative design strategy that effectively fuses them, yet separates them from one another is a necessity. Fire stations are designed to allow for the ability to quickly respond to emergency situations, while most of the spaces within a community center allow for flexible configurations. The generative method of the project consists of sectional studies that utilize the splitlevel as a design tool. The split-level began as a reaction to the change of ground slope and resulted in a variety of spatial configurations. The split-level allows the different program types to be on separate ground planes but be connected in subtle ways. This results in new types of spatial qualities and user interactions, enhancing each program activity and user experience.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Community Guidance Center

Anita Dehmoobad, Tehran Iran

The site is across Macarthur Park on the corner of 7th St and S Park View St. The purpose of this project is to provide a safe and welcoming place to bring the community’s residents together and create opportunities for a better living environment in this community.

This community center is a multi-use building that categorizes into two main programs: programs for adults and children. The program would provide indoor and outdoor social spaces where people can socially interact and exchange their knowledge and information with each other. The project also would be beneficial to educate and increase residents’ knowledge by providing workshops, social services office, resource center, and library. There would be a library and after school classrooms for children; therefore, the parents can access other programs in the building without having childcare concerns. Availability of mental health services would result in residents’ well-being and a safer and healthier community.

This community center would be a valuable asset for the community and resourceful organization for vulnerable residents. As dominant population of the community are immigrants this community center could potentially help them reach their potential and improve their quality of living by using the offered services.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

MacArthur Public Center

Jun Dinh, Vietnam

The project is located across MacArthur Park, which provides an outdoor public space for the local community; however, most of the park’s east side is occupied by the homeless population. Therefore, making it an unwelcoming gathering space for families and children. Because most residents of the area are immigrants, the labor skill gaps between them and the American-born make it harder for them to find higher paying jobs.

To help the current issues in the MacArthur Park neighborhood, I am proposing a public library and community center that provide different services and social spaces for not only the residents, but also the homeless community. Aside from general library functions, such as providing book repositories and reading spaces, the proposed library will also be an information and technology hub that supports and provides services categorized by different ages and types of users. The library will also become an additional gathering and social space that makes up east side park. The community center of the building will serve as the adult learning center and childcare center to provide the community access to education; thus, supporting them in finding jobs and overcoming their financial burdens.

The project will focus on variable social quality spaces that suit a variety of user groups in MacArthur Park. These users include local residents, the homeless population, immigrant groups, and visitors. This social space will be integrated into the building’s circulation to connect different program functions and users’ backgrounds. The circulation will be expressed architecturally through the building façade to create transparency and engagement with the surrounding community. Open space and movable furniture will be kept in mind to help adapt to any future changes.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Intergenerational Community Center

Kim Tran, Ho Chi Minh Vietnam

The proposed project will be situated northwest of Macarthur Park, intersecting between Park View St and 7th street. Macarthur Park has a long history of overcrowding, underinvestment, and elevated city homeless crisis, making it LA’s second-densest neighborhood. Along with ongoing concerns about seniors experiencing isolation and disconnection from their families and communities, leading to adverse health outcomes. The sheer density of the site, and the lack of infrastructure to support it, complicates modern-day life in MacArthur Park.

As a result, most public spaces face the challenges of staying relevant and active.

Those, including community centers that are hardly inviting to the public, lack imaginative planning and appreciable spaces, create a derelict environment. By extending our understanding of community centers as a place, different generations can interact, engage, and be adequately equipped with spaces for physical activities, we can move towards a newer role for the community center in our societies.

To tackle those concerns, the project aims to design a recreational facility that allows members of all generations to use and get involved with each other’s.

It’s a focal point where users can engage with the space through visibility and circulation to allow others to view or participate in activities. The area will influence the interaction of younger, middle, and older generations that will intervene in moments of each other. These moments of interaction between ages will strive to create growth and understanding amongst all people. Together, it allows those different groups to seek meaningful relationships and positive interaction as well as offer support to one another to address challenges they face.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

MacArthur Park Community Center

Trevor Kubo, Honolulu HI

The area surrounding MacArthur Park is a melting pot of different people during the day. Community members, homeless individuals, small business owners, workers, and visitors occupy and gather in this area. While the park itself is open for public use, its longstanding history of being considered an unsafe area causes these different groups of people to rarely interact with each other. The introduction of a community center located on the corner of Wilshire Blvd. and South Alvarado St. on the eastern end of MacArthur Park will serve as an extension of the public space, providing an opportunity where the people of this neighborhood can gather and take advantage of its resources.

A community center is seen as a positive focal point of a particular area because it provides a space that encourages unity and participation – actions that are integral to the identity of a neighborhood. Within the community center at MacArthur Park, there will be services and communal spaces such as occupational training workshops, a children’s day care center, a cafeteria and soup kitchen, a multi-purpose space, and a basketball court. These services may become a valuable part of this neighborhood because they are otherwise unavailable in the immediate area surrounding MacArthur Park.

The structure of the ten-floor community center is consisted of both precast and cast-in-place concrete elements. The total floors of the building are divided into three sections: floors 1-3, 4-7, and 8-10. Each section has a different column size in descending order from bottom to top. The decreasing column sizes create a visual distinction between the three parts of the building and their varying programmatic uses.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Library of Uncirculated Stories

Noah Lemus, Rohnerville CA

Libraries are traditionally at the forefront of being aware and adopting new practices and changing services to match the ebbs and flows of their local community. Libraries are bound to their building and a majority of libraries were built in the post-war era, with spaces based on the older idea of the library even though librarians have come and gone. Yet for libraries to maintain this flux with the local community, their spaces and building need to maintain an adaptable aspect to house new and changing services compared to being bound by their original building and spilling outward.

The particular community of Westlake and MacArthur Park is home to a higher than normal percentage of South American and Central American migrants, 67.6%, compared to the national average of 19.1%. The diverse immigrant community of MacArthur Park needs access to services specific to them while they are learning to navigate life in a foreign country. While the proposed library can be in flux with today’s community of migrants, its spaces can be crafted and reinterpreted in 100 years for future needs. Whether today’s migrants have chosen to remain and establish a community or a new set of people have chosen to call MacArthur Park and Westlake home.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Westlake Community Arts Center

Noah Lum, Santa Ana CA

The space, instruments, and materials necessary for the practice of recreational art are often considered costly, creating a stigma associated with the arts that in order to practice it, one must be among privileged groups of people. The majority non-white households of the Westlake neighborhood that surround MacArthur Park have a median income (of $32k) much lower than what is often considered the required income to live comfortably, let alone participate in arts-centered classes.

Bearing this in mind, the Westlake Community Arts Center located on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Alvardo Street serves the area’s surrounding low-income households that do not have affordable access or space to practice the arts as recreation. The arts center program will provide practice rooms and instruments for users interested in music, dance studios for those intrigued by dance, and two auditoriums for the community to come together for performances. The ground floor remains relatively open for community use as a soup kitchen, as well as a social space for those using the Arts Center.

The architectural expression of the Arts Center relies on the individual arts program remaining transparent to Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard with a glass façade—while the two large performance spaces appear inserted into the building as concrete masses.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

High Tech Vocational School

Alenoosh Mardroosian, Alta Loma CA

There has been a shortage of skilled workers in the United States Since the 1980s and 90s, and while the number of enrollments has been rising since then, there is still a large gap in the market. According to Public Policy Institute of California, by 2025, California will face a shortage of workers with some college education but less than a bachelor’s degree. This project aims to deliver technical, handson education to the low-income community of MacArthur Park. Research shows that while there are many k-12 schools in the neighborhood there are no postsecondary schools in the vicinity of the project site. The neighborhood is also impacted by high poverty rate and slower job growth and only 12% of the residents 25 years and older have a four-year degree. The goal of this project is to engage the community in the building, construction, and technology trades and to give students skills to build their careers. Additional to the vocational school, the project provides housing for 36 students. The massing of the project was derived from the intended use. The project needed large open floor plans for the workshops, therefore the building uses maximum lot coverage and is set on the property line. Additionally, the project uses elements from the High-tech Architecture such as overhanging floors, exposed structure and mechanical systems, and exterior steel staircase to emphasize the industrious purpose of the programs within. This style of architecture provided the possibility to create open and large adaptable spaces for the workshops that are served by smaller support programs.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Indoor Outdoor Library

Raana Matinsefat, Tehran Iran

MacArthur Park, located in the Westlake neighborhood, is a historic park in Los Angeles, California. I’m proposing a mixed-use public library and community center located in Westlake Los Angeles. Based on the research, most of the population in the neighborhood consists of low income and immigrant households. There are approximately 3000 homeless individuals who live in the park that do not have access to any shelter.

Libraries help make communities healthier and allow residents to connect with the communities. Libraries are also safe refuges for the homeless and underserved population and they play an important role in English language learning which I believed is helpful for the immigrants in the neighborhood. In addition to that, public libraries provide economic benefits to local businesses and support the prosperity in the community.

As I mentioned before, I’m proposing a public library combined with community center to help the community in the Mac Arthur Park neighborhood in Los Angeles.

In this mixed-use project, I’m proposing to provide childcare services for different ages, Counseling services, Immigrant Support Services, Reading areas, children and adult book collections, café, open spaces, etc. This project will flourish the new post Covid ecology through helping homeless people in the area to find job and have a better life. In addition, this project will make the neighborhood safer, cleaner and reduce the number of homeless people living in the area.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Frameworks

Alejandro Tapia, Glendora CA

Libraries have always been a critical piece of their communities. Providing the framework for people to grow and develop new skills and knowledge. My project seeks to not only continue this, but to further it by integrating critical community services, such as outreach centers and public classrooms, within the program.

Each level of the project is dedicated to a certain need within the community, from the educational level with provides educational materials to the makers space which allows people free access to revolutionary digital fabrication tools such as CNC machines and 3D printers. Every level is focused on bringing its own knowledge, allowing for occupants to explore and find the floor that best fits with their desire to learn. The ground floor specifically is a place for the community to make their own space. It is intentionally left empty, allowing for local vendors to take over the space. This both clears the sidewalks for pedestrians and creates a dedicated and safer place for the vendors. All these programs are held within a structural steel lattice work that supports the South-West corner of the building. This permeable structure allows for perfect views of the surrounding area, including neighboring McArthur Park, but also symbolically brings together the various levels of the library, unifying them within the building. This expression of unification is further seen in the various double high spaces within the building where levels seem to interject with each other. This allows for a constant visual connection between the levels, enticing people to explore more of the library and see everything it has to offer.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

Double Trouble MacArthur Daycare and Public Library

Cho Zin Theint, Yangon Myanmar

This building is located on the corner of W. 6th street and S Alvarado St., right in front of MacArthur Park. This project will be serving all age groups, whether it is children or adults. A library is a place where it does not differentiate the ages of people using them. Bringing a library into the community will help with the educational level in the neighborhood which will in turn help people get better jobs. The students will also have a place to study outside of their homes because sometimes they do not have the best study environment Another program in the building is the daycare center. It is targeted at the children in the neighborhood, from infants to preschoolers. One of the notable things in the neighborhood is that the adults are busy at work during the day, so a daycare will be helpful to the neighborhood.

The stair in this building goes back and forth from floor to floor while interacting with the spaces. Each floor has a double height corridor with unique programs that allows for the users to interact with the building. The second floor of the daycare has stairs that connects the first and third floor of the daycare with the hiding spots for children and a slide as an option to get to another floor.

The stair in the library is surrounded by bookshelves with each stair leading to more bookshelves and reading areas that are hidden in between the bookshelves, allowing for the readers to get lost in the books. The bookshelves are flexible, allowing for the building to change with the program.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

MacArthur Resource Center One Heavy, One Light

Daniela Vargas, Bloomington CA

Downtown Los Angeles is a diverse community, home to people of all ages, races, and ethnicities. However, this area also exemplifies the need for belonging within the community as this area is home to a large homeless population. This project aims to address inclusivity as a theme with a new public building in Skid Row. The developed program does not direct itself towards one group in the area but the community as a whole. The issue at hand revolves around a lack of resources when it comes to safe space and educational programs. Individuals in the area have little access to recreation and leisure outside of their own homes. I am proposing a recreational center with the aim to provide resources and space to allow for the residents to have social and cultural exchanges as a larger community.

The proposed building will house a mix of library and recreational programs within one structure. The different programs are stacked vertically and allow for exchange between the different users. The building volume and floor plans follows a geometric language of curves to create a building that lets spaces flow into each other and to create spatial connections within.

ARC 4611L

Senior Project Studio

ARC 4611L