In the mid-1980s, UCLA moved its graduate art studios six miles off campus to a former wallpaper factory in a then-industrial section of Culver City. The university purchased the boxy concrete warehouse as an economical solution to the department’s spatial needs; whether the intent was also to encourage an independent spirit in the graduate arts programs, it did just that. The corner building—completed in 1948, with classic, wood bowstring trusses overhead—was raw and durable, and the students energetically, often without restraint, coopted it. Over the years, the structure’s generous street setbacks, to its south and on its west side (where trucks originally pulled up to the loading docks), acquired clusters of small sheds, including a lean-to jerry-rigged as a woodshop and shipping containers that served as spray booths. “To say the place was adapted ad hoc,” says UCLA principal project manager John D’Amico, “is to put it nicely.” It was a messy, creative complex, without such updates as modern climate control or real accessibility. By 2010, when the university issued an RFP, an inspired overhaul was in order. The resulting project—which more than doubles the original 21,100-square-foot factory— finally reached completion this fall.