This new community hub activates a campus of buildings that together provide a zone of stability, opportunity, and acutely needed services for a South Los Angeles neighborhood.

The full two-acre site was owned, and sadly neglected, for decades by the City of Los Angeles Department of Health. At the west half, a recently completed building by Gehry Partners presents a porous and open face to the community for Children’s Institute, a local provider of important social services.

Our project, at the southeast corner of the property, transforms a long, narrow, one-story vintage structure that was cobbled together and added to over time. Although ostensibly a public building, the configuration and the architecture communicated anything but.

Adaptation began with a series of careful cuts and deletions. We used an initial excision – making the building code-compliant for building area – to develop the first of two courtyards containing space for public gathering. New entrances invite the community to participate in our client’s social service programs including early education support and training, family outreach, and ‘The Closet,’ where clientele can obtain interview- and job-ready clothing.

At the interior, six distinct but related elements – light nets – were introduced along the length as a corrective to the building’s previous generic, institutional character. Integrated within strategically located skylights, they create openings connecting the site to its surrounding environment and provide filtered daylight to the various programs.

The limited budget demanded thoughtful conservation and reuse of the irregular existing structure. We ‘operated’ on these ad hoc but interconnected structural zones, carefully inserting form, material and program to define the project’s new uses. The combination of generous entrances, new skylit spaces, and translucent, volumetric light nets lend character and identity to the buildings.

Ambitious design in an unexpected place presents a model for adapting ordinary, neglected building stock into transformative community resources.