Project 03 Los Angeles, 2024

SCI-Arc Extension

Type Institutional / Educational

Location Los Angeles, CA

Year 2024

Strategy Duplication, not Addition

Class Studio SCI-Arc

Instructor Zeina Koreitem

Work Individual

Scroll to explore

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"

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.

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

Plans + Section

Assembly
Drawings

The ground floor plan shows the full long-bar typology; the section reveals the relationship between programme, structure, and height. Both drawings share the same organisational logic a continuous spine from which everything extends.

Ground Floor Plan

Section

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.

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.