The AGBU Innovation Studios occupy the second level of a typical mid-century public school building in Los Angeles’s San Gabriel Valley. The existing space allocated for the program was characterized by a traditional 2 meter wide hallway with one large classroom space on either side. The brief for the project called for 4 equal-sized, discrete studio spaces, with the potential of also using the entire dedicated space as a singular, continuous exhibition setting for student work and community events. The hallway in its extant condition contributed substantially to the structural stability of the building as a whole, and therefore needed to be preserved to the greatest extent possible with the ensuing intervention.  The intervention therefore derives its initial spatial logic from the structural limit of allowable openings within the existing corridor walls. One meter wide openings alternate with walls of equivalent width required to retain the structural integrity of the building. The simple operation of rotating the resulting form 90 degrees results in the rhythmically punctuated cruciform core which addresses the programmatic requirements of the program by organizing the space into 4 discrete studios of equal size and shape, and ultimately deriving the architectural language for the project.

As such, two distinct, binary zones are created - within and outside the cruciform. In lieu of doors, yellow, UV-blocking, strip welding curtains (selected for their relationship to microprocessor “clean rooms”) are mounted on sliding, operable tracks which line the interior of the cruciform. To further aggravate the distinct spatial qualities between the two spaces, yellow, UV blocking fluorescent lights transform the Cruciform into an otherworldly realm. The perimeter of the designated square space is lined with a slatwall system, encouraging the mounting of student projects, transforming the space into a kind of Cabinet for Curiosity for the exhibition and display of student work. The resulting architecture is simultaneously familiar yet foreign. While the Cruciform sits within the square boundaries of the allocated space almost akin to an installation or sculpture, its architectural and conceptual language is derived from a deep attention to and reading of the existing conventional classroom typology and the limits of its structural configuration.