03.13.2012 /
MICHAEL MALTZAN ARCHITECTURE SELECTED FOR ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN MASTER PLAN
Michael Maltzan Architecture has been selected as the architect for the Academic Master Facilities Plan for Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. The Master Facilities Plan includes all existing academic buildings on the original Hillside Campus designed by Craig Elwood in 1976 and the South Campus opened in 2004, as well as new facilities to be constructed within a 15-year horizon.
For more than 80 years, Art Center has excelled in providing its students with the deep knowledge and hands-on experience to master a single area of specialization in the fine and applied arts. The new Master Facilities Plan will reinvent the physical environment of its campuses, creating opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration and learning, enabling technologically sophisticated craft-making, and encouraging an appreciation for sustainable design practices.
A key component of the Master Plan is the replanning and upgrading of the historic Ellwood Building, a modernist masterpiece at the heart of the Hillside Campus. Significant improvements will be made to the building’s structure and mechanical systems. Work is already underway on an initial planning exercise that proposes several approaches to the reorganizing of the building program within the iconic structure. Each offers a reconceptualization of the nature and arrangement of the building’s existing program, illustrating the possibilities and the power of the physical learning environment to support and enable the pedagogic goals of a reinvented Art Center.
