Completion Date: August 2010

Owner: L&M Arts

Program: A single-story, 3,600-square-foot art gallery with offices, two galleries, a private viewing room, a preparator's area, and a flower garden that can accommodate sculptures.

Design Concept and Solution: The architects conceived the new gallery complex as a series of pavilions in the garden. They adapted a brick-clad concrete power station from the 1920s for one gallery, added a new diamond-shaped concrete block structure for the other, and connected the two with a glass-clad wood-frame office. The diamond-shaped gallery makes the most of its triangular plot of land, and its jaunty rotation reinforces the idea of pavilions scattered through a garden. The architects clad the new gallery in bricks salvaged from the remains of buildings in downtown Los Angeles. Inside, a central skylight is framed by the exposed timber roof, recalling the roof structures in many of California's bow-string truss warehouses.

Total construction cost: $1.2 million

Architect:
wHY Architecture
9520 Jefferson Blvd. Studio C
Culver City, CA 90232
Tel: (310) 839-5106
Fax: (310) 839-5107