| Evolving in collaboration with the Los Angeles Unified School District, this 75,000sf, $23M project serves principally as a family YMCA. In joint-use with the District, the YMCA also offers school-time use of its gymnasium and easterly ground level classrooms to LAUSD students. These students are primarily associated with the new gymnasium constructed east of the YMCA site. Thus, a foundational planning element of the master plan is the provision of the new gymnasium and a zone programmed for youth and student use on the ground level at the east end of the site.
The other foundational element is the functional grouping of YMCA entry lobby, community room, and swimming pool functions, all of which ideally share a common adjacency. Because of the narrow, limited footprint of the site, this resulted in the following organizational sequence from left to right, (east to west): First, the entry and Lobby/Community room at the intersection of Ohio and Westgate; then, visible from the Lobby: the Natatorium along Ohio (with locker rooms feeding into the Natatorium from the north), and then the Gymnasium at the far east end. Child care and classrooms line the far north boundary, so that both these functions and the pool have access to daylight, from the north and south respectively.
The 2-story height of the YMCA building, and the 3.5 story height of the parking structure have been defined to a great extent by economics. The principal challenge of the building’s massing and architecture was to transform the relatively hard semi-industrial existing environment of Ohio and Westgate into something more inviting to members and public. Several strategies address this transformation: Firstly, a glassy lobby, raised mildly on a porch, and surrounded by planters, provide the first address to the intersection. The massing of the building’s roof, as it faces Ohio and Watergate, serves as a continuous soft reverse vaulted curve, with standing seam natural metal finish.
Natural light will be brought into the Lobby and Community Room with the generous full-height glazing near the street intersection. The Natatorium will receive both clerestory light above the green wall as well as sky-lighting along its northern zone. The Gym will provide no window lighting, in order to avoid unbalanced light entry and glare, but will be lit uniformly by translucent, filtered sky-lighting.
In order to mitigate both the environment of the neighborhood, and to soften the very minimal setbacks along Ohio that result from the narrow site, much of the south façade of the Lobby and Natatorium is treated with a living green wall, which brings rich vertical landscape across the façade with minimum requirements for depth.
The Parking Structure directly to the north will provide elevator and stair at its southwest corner, allowing translation of visitors, under cover, directly to the YMCA entry.
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