Los Angeles, CA

The expansion of the Sinai Temple Akiba Academy required a puzzle-master’s approach to context and program. Any addition had to respond to the strong character of the original buildings, while packing the constricted site with 60,000 sf of classrooms, a gymnasium, outside play areas, multipurpose rooms, and underground parking for 350 cars. The context required that the new building accommodate a shift in neighborhood scale and character - one side of the building fronts a busy boulevard while the other faces a quiet residential street.

The design responds with a geometric collage that breaks up both the massing and the fenestration while maintaining a consistency of materials, primarily precast concrete. The pavilion facing a wide, busy street is high and assertive. Beneath a cantilevered corner, an entrance staircase rises between walls of Jerusalem stone. At one edge of the building the façade is pulled away from the stair core, recalling the folded planes of the original temple while creating outdoor space. The rear pavilion, in contrast, is both smaller in scale and more sculpted, with a bowed roof that responds to the original building. A two-story glass façade faces a podium-level courtyard, with an enclosed playground for the preschoolers.

By emphasizing functional adjacencies both horizontally and vertically, the building creates an urban campus - achieving in a half city block what suburban schools often spread out over several acres