Project 06 Los Angeles, 2025

SCI-Arc Extension

Type Institutional / Educational

Location Los Angeles, CA

Year 2025

Strategy Duplication, not Addition

Class 4A Studio

Instructor Zeina Koreitem

Work Individual

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Overview

A proposal for a SCI-Arc Extension based on conceptual understanding of program assemblies not an addition, but a duplication.

Strategy

Mirrored twin typology connected through Keck Hall

Site

Adjacent to existing SCI-Arc campus, LA

Key Spaces Duplicated

Fishbowl, Spanish Steps, Thesis Pit, Library, Long Bar

Connection

Central through Keck Hall

Floors

Lobby + Program + Meeting + Informal Working

Scale

Ground Plan + Section at 1/32" · Model at 1/16"

Site

Where
It Sits

The site is the school itself: the existing quarter-mile bar, duplicated and turned outward from Keck Hall at its middle. Where the twin crosses the school it rests on Keck; past the school it comes down to the ground.

34.0453° N, 118.2352° W Drag to pan, +/− or Ctrl + scroll to zoom © OpenStreetMap contributors

Concept

"Not an addition. A recognition."

Keck Hall is the pulsating heart of SCI-Arc. Everything in the building orbits it. Reviews happen there, juries gather there, the energy of the school concentrates and disperses from that single volume. The extension treats Keck as the center of gravity it already is and mirrors the existing bar outward from it, extending the organizational logic of the school symmetrically along the same spine.

Interactive Mirror Sequence

01 / 06 · The Long Bar SCI-Arc as it is: a quarter-mile concrete frame, beams and columns in a steady rhythm, with Keck Hall at its middle, a long facade of windows, its mezzanines, and the hallways that run its full length.

02 / 06 · The Recognition The spaces students already use every day, taken seriously as architectural components: the Fishbowl, the Spanish Steps, the Thesis Pit, the Library.

03 / 06 · Keck Hall The pulsating heart of SCI-Arc. Reviews happen there, juries gather there; everything in the building orbits it.

04 / 06 · The Twin The bar again, wider, turned 35° from Keck and resting on it just clear of SCI-Arc. Five floors stack up one at a time, two on the ground and three above, open down the middle: a floor down each side with its hallway, a mezzanine on each, outside then inside floor by floor and mirrored across, flat bridges over the opening, Thesis Pits in both. It invents no new relationships; it inherits them.

05 / 06 · Structure and Skin Three cores drop in where the ground plan puts them, and between the floors and the mesh the circulation climbs in glass tubes. A long span steel truss roof carries the full width, and the rhythm of its bays sets the windows. The metal mesh skin carries forward the light that softens through the mesh blinds of the bar.

06 / 06 · The Ground The ground is cut as the ground plan draws it: one network running alongside the extension and under it, entered down Spanish Steps at every end, the lobby a tunnel bridged over the cut. Where the cuts meet under the building, Keck is a long box, cut deeper.

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Worm's-Eye Axonometric

The Twin,
From Below

A mirrored duplicate of SCI-Arc hung over the street, seen from below: the cut walls, cores and steps against the existing building it copies.

Worm's-eye axonometric

Program Inventory

What
Actually Works

The project starts from the spaces at SCI-Arc that students already use every day. It takes them seriously as architectural components. Rather than proposing something new, it asks what happens when you acknowledge that these spaces already work, and let that acknowledgment become the design itself.

01 The Fishbowl enclosed pin-up space with full visibility from corridor

02 The Spanish Steps multi-level informal gathering and critique space

03 The Thesis Pit deep, focused studio space below grade

04 The Library linear resource zone along the building's primary axis

05 The Long Bar the full-length corridor that organizes everything

Program assembly diagram ground plan showing spatial distribution

Plan + Sections

Assembly
Drawings

The ground floor plan shows the full long-bar typology; the long and cross sections reveal the relationship between programme, structure, and height. All three drawings share the same organisational logic: a continuous spine from which everything extends.

Ground Floor Plan

Sections

Long section: the extension's floors and mezzanines running the length of the bar

Cross section: the extension between its neighbours, floors paired with mezzanines

Structural + Spatial Logic

Symmetry
as Strategy

A long-span steel truss roof carries the full width of the program while service elements anchor each end. The rhythm of the structural bays dictates the spacing of the windows, giving the façade its measured repetition. Corridor, critique space, studio, and gathering all fall back into place. The program does not invent new relationships between spaces. It inherits them.

Façade

An Everyday
Condition

Even the skin comes from the building as it is now. You walk the length of the bar every day, and over time you develop a sensibility for its walls, for the way light dims and softens through the mesh blinds overhead. The metal mesh exterior façade carries that feeling forward, turning an everyday atmospheric condition into an architectural decision.

Site Model Campus Context Fig. 01

Longitudinal Section Full Building Fig. 02

Section

Preserving
the Heart

The circulation follows SCI-Arc's own strategy. Each main floor pairs with a mezzanine, layering the section the same way the existing building does. What the school already figured out in section, the extension simply continues. The two bars meet at Keck and step down to meet the grade along the site's slope.