Architecture 302:
Architectural Design III
Instructor: Ed Woll
Fall Semester 1997
The fifth semester of the accredited five-year Bachelor of Architecture program is the "integrative" semester -- the time when everything students have learned in their first two years of school are combined into a single grand project.
In our case, this project is a proposed Boys and Girls Club. Three sites were available: the northwest corner of Serrano Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, just east of Western Boulevard and about one mile west of Barnsdall Park; the southwest corner of Hoover and Wilshire, directly across from the western edge of Lafayette Park; and the north corner of Main Street and [???] (located in Santa Monica two blocks north of the library site given in Architecture 202b!).
There were many issues to consider in choosing the site on which to design. To help clarify these issues, groups of five to six students were assigned to each site and asked to analyze the conditions affecting the site, from weather and soil conditions to existing buildings and social interaction around each site. I chose to be on the Hollywood analysis team.
Once analysis was complete, and each team had reported their findings, students ranked each site on a variety of topics. Students were not required to choose the highest-scoring site; however, if a student did not choose his or her highest-ranked site, then he or she was expected to be able to explain why it was not chosen. My rankings for the three sites can be found below:
| SITE FACTORS | Weight | Santa Monica |
Hollywood/ Western |
LafayettePark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Physical (size, shape, slopes, structures on site) | 0.5 | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Access (pedestrian, car, service) | 1.0 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| Subsurface Conditions (soils, ground water, geology, faults) | 1.0 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Zoning Constraints (height limits, FAR limits, setbacks) | 1.0 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Qualitative (context, spirit of place, scale, character) | 1.5 | 3 | 5 | 4 |
| Social/Economic (statistics, income levels, need for services) | 1.0 | 3 | 5 | 5 |
| Totals | 18 | 24 | 22.5 | |
| Average Score | (2.5) | 3 | 4 | 3.75 |
Essentially, the scores reflect my "gut reactions" to each site (though I think I scored Santa Monica a bit hight). The Santa Monica site is literally just down the street from the site of the Community Library project of the previous semester; such proximity to a location for which I have already created a design did not seem very appealing. That is, I want to explore something new. Both Lafayette Park and the Hollywood/Western sites have great potential and are definitely "something new." However, my familiarity with the Hollywood site -- coupled with the fact that I was intrigued by the irregular outline of the site -- let me to favor it by the slightest of margins.