Katz Pavilion
with LehrerArchitectsLA
A flexible Pavilion with a new green Commons and Garden that replaces asphalt and concrete transforms the heart of a Campus.
This new Pavilion and Commons - mandated merely to house a full-size basketball court - becomes an iconic gym/culture/community center and garden centerpiece of this 18-acre religious and educational hilltop campus. It melds with and transforms an existing building and landscape. Over the past 50 years, this hilltop has been chronically fi lled-in with buildings, hardscape and parking. Anticipating their jubilee, the community leadership sensed it could be better. The architects re-imagined this once-spectacular site to recapture its hilltop magnifi cence. This vision is re-imagined as a new Pavilion and Commons Green, the new heart of the campus. They conceived it as a singular indoor-outdoor, play, celebration and gathering place; taking advantage and maximizing possibilities in the Southern California climate. The building and its stretched roof capture and control the sun’s light both inside and out. Its luminosity fi lls the daily experience of the campus users with light and lightness. The roof is shaped to frame the campus upon entering and to appropriate the Santa Monica Mountain views, reconnecting to this dramatic and vast view shed.
