Tilt-Up en vogue in the Hayden tract
The UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios, designed by Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee and Associates, is a world-class facility is dedicated to supporting emerging artists and strengthening Los Angeles’s position as a world arts capital. In July 2016, the School of the Arts and Architecture received a generous $20 million lead gift from alumna and renowned art dealer Margo Leavin in support of the project. And now, the major restoration and expansion creates a new building for the nation’s top-ranked public university to support its leading graduate program.
“Look around, and it is clear that tilt-up is having a moment, and with the design for the new Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios at the University of California, Los Angeles, Johnston Marklee is proving that the humble material is anything but staid.”
Photo courtesy Johnston Marklee — Katie Gerfen, editor of design for ARCHITECT.
On the west side of Los Angeles, close to Venice and LAX in Culver City, exists an area known as Hayden Tract. It is home to formerly abandoned industrial warehouses converted into a vibrant community of studios and offices. Interwoven throughout the area is a famous collection of offbeat architectural interventions designed by Eric Owen Moss. Named “Conjunctive Points,” the series is considered a laboratory for architectural innovation and enlightened development. The newest conversion/addition to the neighborhood is the Johnston Marklee-designed UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios.
Ad Hoc Adaptation
It was in the mid-1980s that UCLA moved its graduate art studios off campus to a former wallpaper factory located in the then-industrial section of Culver City. The rudimentary concrete structure met the department’s spatial needs economically and also provided the sort of blank space and independence the arts program was seeking. The original corner structure, built in 1948, features classic wood bowstring trusses and virtually indestructible concrete bones. Surrounding the building, thanks to its generous street setbacks originally accommodating loading-dock activities, was a two-story concrete masonry office building, a second bowstring truss building, and an accumulation of small sheds and shipping containers students commandeered as woodshops and spray booths. “To say the place was adapted ad hoc,” says UCLA principal project manager John D’Amico, “is to put it nicely.” This, coupled with a total lack of modern updates (like climate control, fire protection, or accessibility) prompted the university to issue an RFP in 2010 for an overhaul. The project sat idle until UCLA alumna and legendary figure on Los Angeles’s art scene, Margo Leavin, gave $20 million for the project in 2016.
Despite the structure’s inadequacies as outlined in the RFP, Sharon Johnston FAIA, Founder and Partner with Johnston Marklee, explained that the design team came to understand the students’ affinity for the existing space and aimed to conserve many of the qualities they were so endeared to. A key conceptual question, said Johnston, was “how to create a state-of-the-art MFA facility without erasing the original spirit and culture.”"— Mitch Bloomquist, May 12, 2020
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Tilt-Up Today website.
Read more about the Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios.
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