Creative Studio and Campus

Show Hide Project Info

This project transforms an 85,000 sf Cold War-era aerospace factory building and the surrounding industrial landscape into a state-of-the-art Digital Animation Studio and Campus for a large entertainment company. The campus design is organized around re-envisioning the parking between two existing buildings as a tree-lined promenade. The promenade links a series of outdoor rooms and patios to a large wooden deck that is the central campus common space and location of the new main entries into each building. The deck also provides direct access to the shared campus amenities of the café, trellis patio, fitness center, and “backyard” green space. Landscape elements were carefully organized to highlight the Verdugo Mountains and minimize views of the surrounding freeways and warehouses.

New landscaping and interventions such as the project’s teak entry pavilion, give the project a fresh identity and allow employees to take advantage of Southern California’s indoor/outdoor lifestyle.

The heart of the project is an open and light-filled common area that provides spaces for work and informal interaction.

Existing Building

The design transforms a windowless factory building into a light-filled creative hub.

Built in 1959, the windowless 200’ x 400’ aerospace factory structure utilized an innovative “cast and lift” concrete waffle roof structure that was emphasized in the renovation. As the location and placement of the openings in the roof and walls of the existing structure were limited, extensive daylight modeling was conducted to inform an optimized placement of openings and focus the light in the building common spaces. A large day-lit common space and adjoining gallery spaces receive the most natural light, while workspaces receive more controlled, indirect clerestory northern light. To alleviate the scale of the single-story building, primary internal circulation is continuous through the building and terminates at views of the newly-composed landscape.

Maple flooring from a high school gymnasium was reclaimed to create the building's wood interiors. 

In addition to the re-use of the existing building structure, the design employed several focused sustainable strategies. These included salvaging over 12,000 sf of maple flooring from a demolished high school gym floor in Los Angeles to clad the floor and walls of the main gathering space, integrated day-lighting controls, and a recyclable roof membrane.

The campus includes community amenities such as a café, gymnasium, landscaped courtyards, and a theater.

Related