St. Matthew's Parish School

Lake/Flato and Gensler collaborate to devise a 21st-century campus, building upon a foundation established by Jones and Emmons.

By Sarah Amelar

Inspired by the landscapes and climate of Southern California, the quintessential work of A. Quincy Jones, most notably his houses, emphasizes simple, open forms, with thin roof planes floating above clerestory windows, and interiors interwoven with the great outdoors. In his academic buildings, such as the St. Matthew’s Parish School, in Pacific Palisades, California, a similar sensibility emerges.

In the early 1950s, after St. Matthew’s moved its chapel from downtown Pacific Palisades to a rural, woodland property nearby, the parish hired Jones and his partner, Frederick Emmons, to expand the chapel and design a larger church for future construction. Though that new church was never realized, the architects transformed the chapel (which burned down 25 years later), devised a master plan for the 30-acre site, and erected several buildings there for a pre- and elementary school, including classrooms and a freestanding library.

By the turn of the millennium, this thriving Episcopal day school, with 325 students from prekindergarten through eighth grade, needed significant campus improvements. St. Matthew’s hired Gensler’s Los Angeles office to create new athletic facilities and, about five years later, invited the firm back, with Texas architects Lake/Flato as the design architects, to produce an updated master plan (the Jones and Emmons document was lost long ago) and a much-needed larger library with new classrooms.

Set in a canyon’s cleft, with scarce level ground, the campus suffered from disconnected parts. And ADA requirements, plus stringent mudslide-protection codes, all developed since Jones’s day, needed serious attention. Architecturally, the greatest challenges stemmed from the complex demands of the steep hillsides.

Program

Lake/Flato and Gensler proposed replacing the original modest, and therefore woefully inadequate, library with a larger one, envisioning a flagship for the entire campus.

Phase 1 would convert the 3,400-square-foot library into a kindergarten classroom, low-tech science lab, and small computer center. Phase 2 would demolish two modest, single-story classroom structures (not by Jones and Emmons) and replace them with a 21,100-square-foot building housing a 9,850-square-foot library, four classrooms, and music, language-arts, and multipurpose rooms. 

St. Matthew’s academic buildings have always been clustered at the campus’s steep northwest end, uphill from the parking lot, gymnasium, and parish church (by Moore Rubell Yudell, following the fire). Enlightened landscaping, pathways, and outdoor play areas, the architects realized, would be key to integrating the disjointed upper campus.

Solution

“This project was a Rubik’s Cube when it came to inserting new construction without intruding on campus life,” recalls Lake/Flato principal David Lake. The goal, he adds, was “a quiet architecture that fit with the landscape and the original buildings.”

Because the old library’s fascia had partially rotted and seismic upgrades were necessary, the architects took the one-story building down to its posts and beams. They removed various accretions, restoring the massing’s original simplicity. The spirit of Jones and Emmons, rather than slavish reconstruction, guided the adaptation of the old library to new uses, with skylights added and windows adjusted to enhance the quality of light and visual connection with the outdoors.

Along the facing canyon wall, just a few yards away, the design team sited the new library and classroom building. A hinged pair of volumes flanking an upper-level bridge, it has classrooms on one side and the new library, with music and multipurpose rooms below, on the other. Like a treehouse hovering at the tree canopy, the structure — clad in cedar with stucco to blend with the surroundings — perches lightly on the ground, the library not exceeding the pad of its demolished predecessor. Long and horizontal, the new building continues the spine of the existing classroom structures, stitched along the canyon’s face.

While the original classrooms were accessed from the back, via a path between the buildings and canyon wall, the new structure offers entry from generous porches along its front, as well. Replacing single-story buildings, the new one rises three stories to accommodate the grandeur of double-height library space inside. The result is an architecture fully engaged with this small canyon, yielding views across it while inviting activity to flow between interior and outdoor realms.

Paths, extending from outside in, thread through the upper campus. Gentle switchbacks, amid native, drought-resistant plantings, now replace a straight road uphill. The building’s bridge feeds into its porches. Steel-grate rails and wood planks underfoot bring the language of the porches inside, through a long stair in the library’s double-height space.

Where students once trudged uphill to class from the car drop-off, an entry sequence now traverses the slope, through open-air stairs integrated into the building. The introduction of an elevator also enhances circulation (and ADA compliance).

With its lofty interior, the library, a magnet on campus, addresses all of the children, with a storytelling nook, stacks, and worktables. The airy new classrooms have clerestories and large operable windows, primarily north facing, with deep overhangs, reducing glare and heat gain.

Commentary

Taking advantage of a climate so mild that the students eat outdoors, not in a cafeteria, the architects transformed difficult terrain into an asset. Reminiscent of jungle rope bridges, long porches provide intimate tree-canopy views, as well as classroom-spillover spaces, now accented with bins of colored balls and hula hoops. Taking cues from the campus’s original design, Lake/Flato and Gensler went even further to merge the interiors with the landscape.

“We wanted the place to be fun,” says Lake, “with an informality that celebrates the spirit of play, combined with a serious discourse of learning.” Judging by the activity on campus, it seems they’ve achieved that.

Gross square footage: 24,500 sq.ft.

Completion Date: September 2006

Owner:
St. Matthew’s Parish School

Architect:
Lake/Flato Architects

Sarah Amelar is a contributing editor at record.

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