Archinect - News

NBBJ and ESI Design's newly renovated Nickerson Gardens Playground in Watts opens

2023-08-21T17:31:00-04:00

NBBJ shares details of its Nickerson Gardens Playground renovation project in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles as part of a grand opening held on August 16th at the site, which forms the center of what is the largest American public housing development west of the Mississippi River.

The project is part of a larger $1 billion redevelopment of the Nickerson Gardens public housing tract that was first designed by Paul Revere Williams in 1955. Along with the 17,656-square-foot renovation, the new life breathed into the site will also include a fitness center, new slides, a carousel, and other brightly-colored children’s play equipment from Kompan.

Project image render courtesy NBBJ.

Completed project build. Image courtesy NBBJ and photography by Ty Cole.

NBBJ designed the project pro bono alongside its East Coast experience design studio ESI Design and with the incorporation of a community feedback process that was led by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA). Red...

Finally complete, the Watts Towers’ restoration is a turning point for public art in Los Angeles

2022-12-06T18:17:00-05:00

One of Los Angeles’ most significant cultural landmarks, Simon Rodia’s monumental Watts Towers sculpture, finally re-opened last month after a five-year multimillion-dollar restoration effort spearheaded by LACMA.

The project was overseen by the museum’s Senior Conservation Scientist Dr. Frank Preusser, Art Conservator Elisabetta Covizzi, and other staffers whose focus fell mainly on repairing the aging concrete and makeshift armature of the 100-year-old towers in addition to cleaning, stabilizing, and reattaching its many thousands of vulnerable ornamental elements.

Image of Elisabetta Covizzi working on Rodia's sculptural canopy at Watts Towers. Taken May 4, 2022, by Sara Chao. Image via Covizzi's Instagram ©master_conservation.

The complex had been standing largely unaltered since a previous late-90s restoration aimed at seismic upgrades was completed in 2001. A decade later, LACMA began organizing a City Hall-backed effort that identified critical areas of need with help from t...

New Gehry-designed Children's Institute campus to officially open later this month in Watts

2022-06-09T19:15:00-04:00

The new 20,000-square-foot Children’s Institute (CII) campus in Los Angeles designed by Frank Gehry is set to open later this month. This is the non-profit’s first-ever purpose-built home in the community of Watts.

Located at Success Avenue and East 102nd Street in South Los Angeles, the $25.79 million campus functions to centralize CII’s operations in the area. It will provide space for 150 CII staff members and will house a range of therapeutic programs and free services for children and families, including toddler socialization, individual and group counseling, youth development activities, parenting workshops, workforce development/employment support, and Project Fatherhood sessions. The facility will also be home to community-based organizations Watts Gang Task Force and the LAPD Community Safety Partnership.

Children’s Institute Watts Campus, aerial view. Photo by Oltmans Construction Co. Courtesy of Children’s Institute

One of the primary goals of the project was to help stre...

Gehry breaks ground on a community resource campus in Watts

2020-01-31T13:32:00-05:00

Gehry Partners and the Children's Institute, non-profit organization that provides social services for children and families living in poverty, have broken ground on a new $20 million, 20,000-square-foot community resource complex in Los Angeles's Watts neighborhood.

Model views of the Children's Institute complex. Images courtesy of Gehry Partners, LLP.

The building is made up of a series of low-slung, discrete rooms that surround a a pair of double-height interstitial spaces overlooked by a mezzanine. The complex will bring facilities for therapeutic programs, counseling, parenting workshops and other community facilities to the neighborhood. The complex will also house the Watts Gang Task Force, a group that "has brokered peace in the community for nearly 15 years, along with the LAPD Community Safety Partnership," while also offering "a nationally-recognized model for relationship-based policing," according to a press release for the project.

Photo from the ground-breaking cere...

How Frank Gehry was won over to design the Watts Children's Institute pro bono

2016-10-21T13:44:00-04:00

"We explained what the agency does and what we stand for, and he gave me a handshake right there," offering to work pro bono. [...] Of his design — a series of two-story, garden-surrounded buildings that echo the modest scale of the neighborhood, their shiny roofs the only Gehry-esque note — he says: "This building is not fancy but has all of my heart and soul in it. I worked hard to make spaces for the kids and families that would use it so that they would feel special."

Gehry's Watts involvement previously in the Archinect news:

Frank Gehry-designed children's center planned for Watts neighborhood in L.A.

2015-09-14T19:48:00-04:00

Frank Gehry, whose firm provided the work free of charge, spelled out his vision for a piece of property that extends nearly two blocks. The two-story structures will fit the neighborhood... offering a scale and a 'body language' that is residential in nature...[The] Children's Institute project is one of several signs that new services and amenities are coming to the neighborhood, which recently commemorated the 50th anniversary of the historic civil unrest that erupted in 1965.

More recent Frank Gehry-related news on Archinect:

Gehry's product designs to be honored by Museum of California Design

Frank Gehry opens up about the emotional side of his architecture

Frank Gehry's renderings for L.A.'s Sunset Strip revealed

Gehry to prioritize hydrology in LA River revitalization strategy

Looking to "Frank Gehry", after Paris but before Los Angeles

Can a Frank Gehry design help change the dynamic of Watts?

2014-07-24T13:09:00-04:00

Gehry Partners has signed on to design a campus for the Children's Institute, Inc. (CII), a social services not-for-profit that provides youth development and education programs, as well as other family support and clinical services. For the project, the firm is collaborating with (fer) studio of Inglewood. The new campus will occupy a 2-acre lot on East 102nd Street near its intersection with Compton Avenue. It is just a half-dozen block walk to the northwest of the Watts Towers.