Animo Leadership Charter High School is getting some new Pugh + Scarpa-designed digs, about two and a half miles from its old leased location in Lennox. Operator Green Dot Charter Schools awarded a bid to the firm for a new, permanent location for Green Dot's oldest school (it opened in 2000).
The new school will serve a max of 525 students, in 50,435 square feet straddling two sites, at 11044 S. Freeman Ave. (currently home to a burnt-out church) and 11111 S. Freeman Ave., across the street and down a ways. Pugh + Scarpa's website says that situation, plus the LAX- and 105-adjacent neighborhood, shaped the project: "The solution was to concentrate the programming with the most daily activity on one site—grouping classrooms, administrative offices, and support facilities such as the library and laboratories—leaving the other site to accommodate large assembly spaces that incur less frequent traffic, in this case the multipurpose gymnasium and a large studio space for music and dance." The school will have 650 solar panels, covering one side and the roof.
The new Animo is already buzzy--it's won the Westside Urban Forum's Westside Prize for Infill-Unbuilt, and just earned a citation in the AIA's Committee on Architecture for Education Educational Facility Design Awards (LA's Camino Nuevo High School, known for winning hearts and minds, placed in the Merit category).
· Green Dot [Pugh + Scarpa Architects]
· 2009 CAE Educational Facility Design Awards [AIA]
· Camino Nuevo Finally Gets The Love it Deserves [Curbed LA]
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