The Page Park Pavilion is a proposed multifunctional pavilion sited in George C. Page Park between the LACMA campus and the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. The design intent was to create a pavilion that would explore the shaping of space with materials and light and yet be both programmatically flexible and formally responsive to its context.
Driven by contextual forces, the pavilion massing aims to create both a contextual relation and initiate dialogue through a more surface active form. The pavilion for example shows sensitivity in its relation to the park by submerging part of the massing so as to soften the transition from landscape to building and contribute areas for seating. Through berming a relation is not only formed between that of the Page Museum massing, but the ramping in the berm allows ADA access to the roof surface of the pavilion. By cantilevering the building mass towards the Tar Pits the pavilion roof not only becomes an observation deck and a beacon from Wilshire Boulevard, but further creates a dialogue with the roof line of the Japanese Art Pavilion.
Read as an object, the pavilions contrasting relationship to the park and to surrounding buildings is achieved through a duality in its formal language, creating formal contrast through both softness and hardness. In its relation to the park landscape the pavilion takes on more Cartesian formal qualities, while in contrast to surrounding buildings the building massing becomes much more topological as it emerges from the ground.
Through a multi-use massing strategy based on lighting ambience the pavilion serves as a vessel for a multiplicity of activities. Temporal changes in lighting would bias certain programs, for example a more diffused lighting condition would provide the appropriate ambience for a gallery exhibit. The approach to the lighting concept of the Page Park Pavilion was to develop a formal strategy of surface inflection as a way to utilize the surface of the building as a light diffusing filter and avoid a homogenous lighting condition. Depth Diffusers for example are surface inflections that achieve light washing effects by creating depth and distance within the wall membrane, creating an indirect lighting condition. Point Light Diffusers in contrast use surface intersection as a means to create points of light intensity that function as light wells when the sun is aligned and as light emitting surface when lit indirectly. In their construction the light diffusing filters will be fiber reinforced plastic panels that are inserted into voids of the precasted concrete shell of the pavilion.
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Status: School Project
