A campus aimed at enriching high school students’ lives through art and music received one of its finishing touches from a specialty contracting team that wanted its work to mirror the creativity of the students.
Los Angeles Unified School District’s Central Los Angeles High School #9 is expected to be a showcase campus for the district and features a number of performance and art activities designed for the school’s nearly 2,000 students.
Enclos worked on installing the curtain wall for the entrance to the 40,000-sq-ft theater wall lobby.
The Enclos design team worked closely with the architect to develop an economical design. Designs were made from 3D model geometries rather than conventional drawings and requiring a symbiotic relationship between Enclos and the architecture team.
The project team’s involvement with the architect throughout the design/assist-design/build phase helped to make the construction process easier on everyone involved.
One of the featured aspects of the school is its 1,000-seat auditorium and theater. The project team used about 5,600 sq ft of highly customized sloped glazing and 313 sq ft of skylight glazing for the theater lobby.
The glass was placed into angular planes that enclose and provide entry into the theater lobby and 13 unique faces span the lobby at different angles and slopes. The project team used custom designs, novel materials and highly-crafted exposed structure systems to give the theater its look.
There were some potential challenges involved with the complex geometry of the school, especially on the fabrication and installation side.
The glass-fixing system was designed around an off-the-shelf Kawneer sloped glazing system capable of economically accommodating the façade’s negative slopes. An AESS backer system was then designed to support the Kawneer system. Safety was important to the project team when working on the campus. The project team employed the use of a perimeter cable for a fall arrest anchorage point. The team also had a detailed process where a member of the team takes over responsibility of the perimeter cable, along with verification and daily sign-off process. The Enclos Safety Awareness program includes a “Daily Huddle” to kick off the shift which is part of the project team’s safety culture.
Project Team
Owner: Los Angeles Unified School DistrictGeneral Contractor: PCL Construction Services, Inc., Los Angeles
Architect: Coop Himmelblau, Los Angeles
Executive Architect: HMC Architects, Ontario
Façade Contractor: Enclos Corp., Los Angeles
