This project involved the full renovation of an existing two-story charter school in the Huntington Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Academia Moderna’s mission is to create life-long learning for students, and inspire them to be inquisitive, passionate, engaged, and independent. The school desired a transformation of their existing warehouse home to cultivate a “school” feeling within the industrial envelope. The project was designed specifically to make a more usable, functional, and lively space that would serve the students in pursuit of Academia Moderna’s mission.

To bring natural light deep within the building, hallways and classrooms alike benefit from the addition of well-placed skylights, reducing energy usage and promoting well-being. Throughout the project, the creative and strategic application of color and graphics creates a truly joyful learning environment for the elementary school students within. Completed on a tight budget, the Academia Moderna Charter School is an example of inspiring placemaking.

This addition to an existing elementary school in an underprivileged neighborhood in Los Angeles reflects the school district’s commitment to raise the quality of schools throughout the city. Composed of three different structures, the largest is a 32,800 square-foot structure that contains 16 new air-conditioned classrooms and underground parking. Two smaller structures provide a new kitchen and a lunch shelter.

The siting of the new structures creates a coherent campus plan. Adding a wing to the existing L-shaped structure, the new classrooms complete the street edge and define a large, central courtyard. The new kitchen and lunch shelter breaks down this courtyard into a series of smaller spaces. New outdoor bleachers and stairs accommodate the downward progression to the lower play area. One of the defining features of the new classroom building is a tall entry portal that aligns with a slot of space, guiding one’s approach.

The painting pattern takes its cues from the colorful houses in the surrounding neighborhood and acknowledges (without condoning) the popularity of tagging and graffiti. Providing a unique and unexpected element for the school’s students, its cheerful presence is also appreciated by the neighborhood’s residents.

The first LEED-certified charter school facility in Los Angeles was born of the transformation of two manufacturing warehouses into a pair of high schools.

Limited to 500 students, each school has its own separate administration, as well as its own architectural identity. Inhabiting the original brick warehouse, the school called “Animo Justice” utilizes warm, red and yellow hues and is entered from the south side of the shared exterior entry courtyard. In contrast, “Animo Ralph Bunche,” the school housed in the tilt-up concrete structure, uses a cooler, blue and green palette, and is accessed via a dramatic steel stair and second floor roof deck on the north side of the courtyard. While each school has its own circulation system, each has independent access to a shared gym and library situated near the center of the combined facility. Skylights are used extensively to ensure that each classroom has access to natural light and a view of the sky.

Located on the edge of a residential neighborhood in South Los Angeles (formerly known as South Central), these facilities offer the promise of a better future to this historically underprivileged area.