Wildwood
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Building 9, Wildwood Elementary School

Culver City, CA

Architecture

2003 AIA|LA Design Citation Award

 Wildwood Elementary School inhabits an aggregation of nine separate buildings; the newest, Building 9, hovers over the edge of the parking lot. The site strategy preserves the existing buildings, saves as much positive outdoor open space as possible, and allowed construction to occur without disrupting the functioning of the campus. Building 9 adds, but does not erase, reconstructing three existing handball courts that had been a favorite play area as shear walls for the new building. The new construction both complements the aggregation and provides a frame to complete the campus.

Materials and finishes are collaged from a palette borrowed from both on and off site. The classroom floor is supported over the parking lot on blue steel columns protected with intumescent paint. Board-form concrete walls and stairs on the ground contrast with corrugated sheet metal sheathing and smooth, yellow-green cement above. Open web truss-joists and OSB sheathing are sealed in their natural state on the interior, metal railings, frames, and beams are of galvanized steel, and windows and doors are low maintenance aluminum. Structural tongue and groove exterior decking is both structure and ceiling over the second floor walkways and the entry/stair canopy.