Submitted by Carrier Johnson + CULTURE

Composed primarily of glass and metal, the south-wing addition to the $51-million Cal State Dominguez Hills Leo F. Cain Education Center is a five-story, state-of-the-art library facility whose monumental scale is attenuated by a simple yet elegant design inspired by transparency and luminosity – traditional metaphors for learning, inspiration and progress.

The new 140,000-sq-ft addition provides the much-needed space to house the educational and cultural resources for the growing campus and surrounding community, including access to the university’s entire collection of books and research materials (currently at over half a million volumes), comfortable study areas, grand reading rooms, technologically advanced archival storage and research areas, an events center and multi-cultural art gallery and learning center.

Bridging the divide between old and new, the addition complements the existing library without borrowing from its visual vernacular and responds instead to the existing building’s scale and slope. The addition is anchored to an angled “plinth” to accommodate the sloping site.

Project Team

Developer/Owner: California State University, Dominguez Hills, Carson
General Contractor: S.J. Amoroso Construction Co., Costa Mesa
Construction Management: O’Connor Construction Management Inc., Irvine
Architect: Carrier Johnson + CULTURE, San Diego
Civil Engineer: KPFF, Los Angeles
Structural Engineer: BFL Owen, Irvine
MEP Engineer: Glumac, Irvine