Santa Monica High School Exploration Building & Gold Gymnasium

clozada on August 22, 2024

The New Exploration Building and Gold Gymnasium are a major addition to the 3,000+ student campus of Santa Monica High School (aka Samohi). The complete campus was reimagined in 2017 to maximize outdoor learning opportunities and to update the indoor classroom learning experience.

The Exploration Building is designed with a flexible Moment steel frame, raised access floor, and demountable partitions which can be reconfigured to adapt to evolving needs. Mechanical towers, expressed on the facade, allow for flexible zoning and maximize rooftop outdoor learning. The building’s program focuses on providing students with access to explore a wide array of professional fields including the arts, law, health and wellness, engineering, and more. The mix of spaces include labs, both indoors and outdoors, working studios, and a large, multi-functional event space. This portion of the project is connected to the gymnasium via a covered outdoor paseo.

The Gold Gymnasium follows the site grade creating a stepped building of telescoping volumes. The two-court configuration allows for diverse uses from practice games, competitions to multi-purpose assemblies, supported by 800-seats of telescoping bleachers. The building also contains inclusive locker rooms, supports dance classes, pep squad, health classes, a fully equipped fitness studio, and yoga studio.

UCLA Faculty Club

clozada on August 22, 2024

As the only Mid-century California Ranch style building within the UCLA campus core, the Faculty Club is unique amongst its neighbors. What makes the Club even more significant are its exterior spaces. Most dining and meeting rooms have direct visual and physical connections to outdoor spaces, and the total area of outdoor terraces and gardens is nearly the equivalent to the total area of interior dining and meeting rooms.

Moore Ruble Yudell’s design philosophy for the building’s renovation was driven by a deep respect for the architectural heritage and culture of the Club, paired together with the integration of timely University needs.

Initiated by necessary seismic and infrastructure improvements, the structural renovation project created an opportunity to transform and revitalize the Club inside and out. Working closely with Faculty Club leadership, as well as the greater University, a holistic planning and design approach guided decisions about updates to the landscape design, color, finishes, and lighting to create greater cohesion between the Club’s interior and exterior spaces. Historically significant art and artifacts are integrated throughout the public spaces, while the warmth of the new palette fosters friendly scholarly exchange, gathering, and a sense of community among the members and guests.

Santa Monica High School Discovery Building

Dan J on August 2, 2024

Santa Monica High School, known as Samohi, serves nearly 3,000 students. The new Samohi Discovery Building is less a building than an operable, adaptable platform for rapidly evolving K-12 learning and teaching. The design team orchestrated a collaboration with the district leaders, administration, teachers, students, and community members to create the new 31-classroom building and aquatic center facility, part of a multi-phase redevelopment of the historic campus.

This 260,0000-square-foot project represents a new approach to long-term building for a community, and to blending public and private uses for maximum benefit. The building was designed with Open Building principles to ensure that it is adaptable even to non-school uses in the future, as the community evolves. Today, some parts of the building are open to community and private uses during non-school hours. Balancing such access with daily security relies on smart campus planning, with clear, efficient movement of visitors from limited entry points to spaces for events. For example, the new building’s large Dining and Assembly Hall and smaller Multi-use Commons are strategically located adjacent to a main pedestrian entrance. A public school designed with resilience and adaptation in mind represents a durable investment of public funds.

 

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