The proposed building provides a new home for the Warner Graduate Art Studios at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on the site of a former wallpaper factory in Culver City, Los Angeles County. The project’s basic objectives are twofold: to rehabilitate existing urban and architectural elements – through adaptive reuse and complementary additions; and to frame a discourse on the role of mundane construction as the generator of space and form. Under the motto “Adapting for a Flexible Future”, the new addition – an L-shaped building comprised of naturally ventilated spaces and a series of outdoor courtyards – is designed in such a way as to accommodate forthcoming changes. While stitching the new complex into the surrounding fabric, the project fuses together new and old structures to allow differentiated and yet unanticipated uses to unfold freely.

The jury appreciated the idea to bring a nondescript building back to life through new construction, a design respectful of the existing structure, while introducing new spatial qualities to the entire ensemble. A dialog is established between past and present, for an educational facility directed toward the future – a dialog most clearly expressed in the sequence of spaces at the intersection of the “new” and the “old”. The jury valued the efforts undertaken to integrate low-technology principles in the design, without falling into clichés of “sustainability”. Economic, contextual, and environmental aspects are combined to form a sophisticated building in an extraordinary approach for an ordinary structure. The project gives due credit to an understanding of sustainability as a “common sense” culture, contributing to an elemental construction of poetic expression.