The proposed Gehry Partners design of the new SELA Cultural Center in South Gate, Los Angeles, is moving forward with approvals from the L.A. Board of Supervisors.
The project forms a major part of the Rio Hondo portion of the Lower Los Angeles River Revitalization Plan, which is contained in the larger 51-mile-long master plan designed by Gehry to run from the San Fernando Valley to San Pedro.
According to Urbanize LA, who reported on the recent approval: “The site sits on the south side of Imperial Highway, and near other upcoming Los Angeles River projects such as South Gate's 30-acre 'Urban Orchard.' Additionally, the cultural center would sit a short distance from the right-of-way of Metro's West Santa Ana Branch light rail line.”
The project will be executed at 85,000 square feet with a site plan from OLIN. Details include an outdoor terrace deck and space for cultural events. Another pavilion structure at the riverway's headwater in Canoga Park has also broken ground in the last year.
This plan becomes the fourth active Gehry Partners building project in the Los Angeles area behind the Colburn School of Music expansion in downtown, the mixed-use Ocean Avenue development in Santa Monica, and the soon-to-start reinvention of the former Gladstones restaurant for Wolfgang Puck in Malibu.
Another mixed-use project at 8150 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood is also being planned. No budgets or construction timeline for the SELA Cultural Center have been made public at this time.
4 Comments
He was excited about this project when we talked on stage at the Getty while he was receiving the Neutra award from Cal-Poly Pomona students. I thought he was excited because he was serving the city, the public, and not his usual wealthy clients. A music school for underserved communities in LA County. Gehry has some unpublished educational and other types of buildings around the city for his small clients and friends. Unless you know, it would be hard to guess they are his projects, kudos to him.
So far, this project has the conditions and the ingredients of his much-loved early work.
This is a good and funny documentary teaching kids to design Purium, a future city in LA. 1972. https://archive.curbed.com/2019/6/14/18679575/frank-gehrys-school-architecture-design-learning
"He was excited about this project when we talked on stage at the Getty while he was receiving the Neutra award from Cal-Poly Pomona students" - that was a great event. You can watch it here.
"the larger 51-mile-long master plan designed by Gehry to run from the San Fernando Valley to San Pedro."
The river ends in Long Beach, not San Pedro.
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