It’s opening day for SPF:architects’ new Michelle and Barack Obama Sports Complex in Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills neighborhood. The new development replaces the old 29-acre Rancho Cienega Sports Complex and was developed in conjunction with Buro Happold and Hood Design Studio.

The scheme critically includes what is being labeled as one of the city’s first Net Zero Energy (NZE) buildings — the all-new basketball wing of the larger, 40,000-square-foot facility — and is landscaped in a grid to evince five distinct ecologies: high desert, canyon, coastal, chaparral, and medicinal. 

Hood’s drought-tolerant landscape design is also said to be inspired by the early-20th-century abstract painters like George Braque and Fernand Leger. The upgraded facility it surrounds is an amalgam of pre-engineered metal buildings (PEMB) deliberately selected to reduce costs and the environmental impacts of materials used in the project, which came together at the start of 2015 thanks to support from the city’s Bureau of Engineering, Public Works, and Recreation and Parks Departments. 

Per SPF:a: “Sustainability strategies include extensive daylighting through Solatubes, natural ventilation, a photovoltaic solar array, permeable paving, bioswales, a grey water system as well as several other passive strategies including the repurposing of the existing community pool into a stormwater retention tank. Additionally, the project features a higher-than-standard number of electric vehicle charging stations, drought-tolerant landscaping, and abundant bike racks to encourage the use of alternative transportation.”

The Culver City-based studio is coming off the recent completion of a key aspect of the LA River revitalization megaproject — the new Taylor Yard Pedestrian Bridge near Elysian Park — and will soon deliver a new performing arts center to Orange County. A press release indicated that the development is currently seeking LEED Gold certification. The site is located at the intersection of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Obama Boulevards, the latter having been renamed three years ago to reflect the former President's significance to what is widely considered to be one of the most successful predominantly Black communities in the country.