The success of phase 1 implementation is the result of a comprehensive master plan and capital campaign resulting in a 10 classroom complex including multi-purpose room and central courtyard totaling $11M over 8,500sf.
The unique character of Villa Esperanza’s campus - a school in a residential neighborhood - stimulated an initial series of reflections that led to the evolution of the design: On the one hand, the history of the school, and its adaptation to residentially-scaled buildings, has created an inherent sense of compatability, intimacy, modesty. On the other hand, a house is not the appropriate scale, either vertically or horizontally, for a school. The Guiding Principles provided the cue for architectural character in their call for a “dynamic presence.”
In fusing the intimate, comforting character of the residential history and context with this more properly scaled dynamic presence, we considered a number of precedents in both residential and institutional architecture. The work of Frank Lloyd Wright struck us a particularly relevant, with its continuous banding of high clerestory windows: These windows, in the case of Villa Esperanza, seem not just stylistically meaningful, but also highly functional in bringing in daylight while also being out of collision range with sometimes overly-rambunctious children. The kind of craft associated with Wright’s work is also much at home throughout Pasadena.
A second precedent of interest, given the unavailability of bringing in low daylight and views, is the kind of roofscape that opens up to light and view from above, harvesting its relationship to the world in an extroverted manner by ‘tipping its hat’ to the sky.
Another source, in pursuit of the fusion of dynamism and residential warmth, is the concept of old materials and new technology: A rain-screen wall, in which the exterior building cladding floats, in panels, away from the sub-structural wall, is an emergent way to ventilate the wall of humidity, and to provide an air space and additional insulation. Virtually any material can serve as the finish of this wall system, and, proposed for the Villa Esperanza campus is a combination of permanently sealed wood and, another permanent finish: an oxide-pigment plaster, that is worked in the shop to a custom patina. Together, these materials will provide both warmth and variegation to the school’s wall surfaces.
Supplementing these basic material concepts at the exterior perimeter is a more durable charcoal-toned tile finish. This material would wrap planters in some areas, and, at the Villa Street frontage, would house changeable art display niches. As students go to and from their daily transit, arriving at and leaving school, they would be exposed to a sharing of their own work. This would bring the work of Villa Esperanza directly and proudly to the street, and express what Villa Esperanza is: a meaningful culture of care, nurture, and development against all odds.
