Cahuenga Elementary School: Lessons of Biophilia in Democratic Space – Community and Nature in the Classroom

Korea Town, Los Angeles, CA
69,650 sf

DESCRIPTION: Located in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, the K-5 Cahuenga Elementary School will accommodate over 800 students and help alleviate overcrowded classrooms within the district. The architectonic language of the project seeks to give the community and their children a love of life and the living world. To accomplish this goal, the public is invited to utilize the school as a community center after school is out, however, while school is in session, the architecture becomes a living laboratory for learning. Communal spaces, atriums, reading gardens, and walkable vegetative roofs collectively contribute to the love of life and the living world of nature. The Cahuenga Elementary School seeks to break down the barriers of inequality and political unrest from this urban setting through a simple diagrammatic design with sustainable principles that creates lessons of biophilia taught in a democratic space as both the community and nature are united together in the classroom.

RECOGNITIONS + AWARDS:
AIA-PF Online Design Awards Exhibition, 2009

STUDIO: Advisor: Irma Ramirez – Cal Poly Pomona, Spring 2009