Larry David, Maria Menounos, and Sofia Vergara are among the Hollywood elites scheduled to attend a star-studded gala March 8 to celebrate the opening of Emerson College's new $85 million Los Angeles campus building.
Located on Sunset Boulevard, in the heart of LA's entertainment and communications industry, the 10-story, 107,000-sf multipurpose campus can house up to 217 students and includes wired classrooms, an open-air screening and live-performance space, a Dolby Surround 7.1 audio post-production suite, a 4K screening room, computer labs, mixing suites, and a planned green screen motion capture stage.
Design architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis said the building's form, which takes the shape of a massive, shimmering aircraft hangar, housing a sculptural, glass-and-aluminum base building, is designed to "expand the interactive, social aspect of education. We focused on creating with the broader community in mind—both in terms of public space and sustainable design.”
The building’s exterior features a dynamic sun shading system that adapts to changing weather conditions to maintain optimal indoor temperature and natural light levels. Heating and cooling of the building is further optimized through an innovative passive valence system developed by Buro Happold.
Photo: Iwan Baan - www.iwan.com / Courtesy Emerson College
Additional green design initiatives include: the use of recycled and rapidly renewable building materials; installation of efficient water-saving fixtures; a high-performance glass curtain-wall to minimize heat gain; landscaping and a living green wall; and a central management infrastructure to monitor overall building efficiency.
Morphosis' design statement:
Bringing student housing, instructional facilities, and administrative offices to one location, ELA condenses the diversity of a college campus into an urban site. Evoking the concentrated energy of East-Coast metropolitan centers in an iconic Los Angeles setting, a rich dialogue emerges between students’ educational background and their professional futures.
Fundamental to the Emerson Los Angeles experience, student living circumstances give structure to the overall building. Housing up to 217 students, the domestic zones frame a dynamic core dedicated to creativity, learning, and social interaction. Composed of two slender residential towers connected by a helistop, the 10-story square frame encloses a central open volume to create a flexible outdoor “room.”
A sculpted form housing classrooms and administrative offices weaves through the void, defining multi-level terraces and active interstitial spaces that foster informal social activity and creative cross-pollination. Looking out onto the multi-level terrace, exterior corridors to student suites and common rooms are shaded by an undulating, textured metal scrim spanning the full height of the towers’ interior face.
Photo: Iwan Baan - www.iwan.com / Courtesy Emerson College
Looking to the local context, the center finds a provocative precedent in the interiority of Hollywood film studios, where outwardly regular façades house flexible, fantastical spaces within. With rigging for screens, media connections, sound, and lighting incorporated into the façade’s metal framework, this dynamic visual backdrop also serves as a flexible armature for outdoor performances. The entire building becomes a stage set for student films, screenings, and industry events, with the Hollywood sign, the city of Los Angeles, and the Pacific Ocean in the distance providing added scenery.
Anticipated to achieve a LEED Gold rating, the new center champions Emerson’s commitment to both sustainable design and community responsibility. Wrapping the building’s northwest corner, a green wall underscores the towers’ actively changing exterior skin. Connected to weather stations that track the local climate, temperature, and sun angle, the automated sunshade system opens and closes horizontal fins outside the high-performance glass curtain-wall to minimize heat gain while maximizing daylight and views.
Further green initiatives include the use of recycled and rapidly renewable building materials, installation of efficient fixtures to reduce water use by 40%, energy savings in heating and cooling through a passive valence system, and a building management and commissioning infrastructure to monitor and optimize efficiency of all systems.
Photo: Iwan Baan - www.iwan.com / Courtesy Emerson College
Building Team
Architect: Morphosis Architects (Thom Mayne)
Structural engineer: John A. Martin Associates, Inc.
MEP engineer: Buro Happold
General contractor: Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company
Development consultant: Robert Silverman
Civil engineer: KPFF
IT/BIM implementation: Synthesis
Lighting consultant: Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design, Inc.
Specifications: Technical Resources Consultants, Inc.
Theater consultant: Auerbach Pollock Friedlander
Acoustic consultant: Newson Brown Associates LLC
Audiovisual/IT consultant: Waveguide Consulting Inc.
Code/life safety consultant: Arup
Facade consultant: A. Zahner Architectural Metals; JA Weir Associates
Cost consultant: Davis Langdon
Vertical transportation: Edgett Williams Consulting Group, Inc.
Curtain wall consultant: Walters & Wolf
LEED consultant: Davis Langdon
Graphics: Follis Design
Waterproofing consultant: Independent Roofing Consultants
Geotechnical consultant: Geotechnologies Inc.
Sustainability: Davis Langdon
Landscape consultant: Katherine Spitz Associates
Architectural specifications consultant: Technical Resources Consultants, Inc.
Architectural visualization: Kilograph
Smoke control: Exponent
Exterior building maintenance: Olympique
Project Information
Cost: $85 million
Total size: 107,000 sf (70,500 sf residential; 30,100 sf instructional/administrative; 6,400 sf retail for Emerson kitchen)
Lot size: 37,351 sf
Building height: 130 feet; 10 stories
Parking: three levels of subterranean parking with 239 parking spaces
Housing: capacity for 217 students: 159 single rooms (eight are designated for resident assistants), 29 double rooms, and four faculty/staff apartments
Instructional spaces: six general purpose classrooms; computer lab; editing lab; audio lab; distance learning room; two performance studios; two dressing rooms; two study rooms; 4K screening room; large assembly room; audio post mixing suite
For more information, read Emerson's article on the Emerson LA grand opening and the LA Times report.
Photo: Iwan Baan - www.iwan.com / Courtesy Emerson College
Photo: Iwan Baan - www.iwan.com / Courtesy Emerson College
Photo: Iwan Baan - www.iwan.com / Courtesy Emerson College
Photo: Iwan Baan - www.iwan.com / Courtesy Emerson College
Photo: Iwan Baan - www.iwan.com / Courtesy Emerson College
Photo: Iwan Baan - www.iwan.com / Courtesy Emerson College
Related Stories
| Apr 30, 2014
Visiting Beijing's massive Chaoyang Park Plaza will be like 'moving through a urban forest'
Construction work has begun on the 120,000-sm mixed-use development, which was envisioned by MAD architects as a modern, urban forest.
| Apr 29, 2014
Best of Canada: 12 projects nab nation's top architectural prize [slideshow]
The conversion of a Mies van der Rohe-designed gas station and North Vancouver City Hall are among the recently completed projects to win the 2014 Governor General's Medal in Architecture.
| Apr 29, 2014
USGBC launches real-time green building data dashboard
The online data visualization resource highlights green building data for each state and Washington, D.C.
| Apr 29, 2014
Big U in the Big Apple: New design to protect New York City's coastline
Bjarke Ingels' proposed design for the Rebuild by Design competition adapts a key design principle in ship building to improve urban flood protection.
| Apr 28, 2014
Welcome to the Hive: OVA designs wild shipping container hotel for competition
Hong Kong-based OVA envisions a shipping-container hotel, where rooms could be removed at will and designed by advertisers.
Smart Buildings | Apr 28, 2014
Cities Alive: Arup report examines latest trends in urban green spaces
From vertical farming to glowing trees (yes, glowing trees), Arup engineers imagine the future of green infrastructure in cities across the world.
| Apr 25, 2014
How the 'digital natives' will transform your Building Team
The newest generation to enter the workforce is like no other that has come before it. This cohort is the first to grow up with the Internet, mobile technologies, and an “always connected” lifestyle.
| Apr 25, 2014
A radiant barrier FAQ: Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask
There are many examples of materials developed for the space program making their way into everyday life and radiant barriers are just that. SPONSORED CONTENT
| Apr 25, 2014
6 winners selected for the Architectural League Prize
The Architectural League Prize, created in 1981, "recognizes exemplary and provocative work by young practitioners and provides a public forum for the exchange of their ideas," according to The Architectural League.
| Apr 24, 2014
Unbuilt and Famous: LEGO releases box set of Bjarke Ingels' LEGO museum
LEGO Architecture has created a box set that customers can use to build replicas of the LEGO Museum, which is not yet built in real life. The museum, designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group, will commemorate the history of LEGO.