Construction Underway at HGA-Designed Clausen Hall

Oct. 24, 2011 - PRLog -- Construction has begun on HGA Architects and Engineers’ redesign of Los Angeles City College’s Clausen Hall, a 60,000-square-foot facility for the school’s music department at the 78-year-old Los Angeles campus. HGA’s $13 million modernization and systems upgrade will expand the college’s popular music department with a renovated recital hall and new lecture hall while creating a visually striking entrance to the campus. The project, due for a 2012 completion, is an example of HGA’s continuing core expertise in designing visual and performing arts facilities.

Currently being built by Summit Builders, the renovation includes the expansion of the 190-seat recital hall and the addition of a 150-seat lecture hall, music library and study area, and several classrooms and practice rooms, as well as renovations to the band room, coaching studios and faculty offices. The renovation also allows for the purchase of new music instruments and equipment.

“One of the biggest design challenges we faced, as in any adaptive-reuse project, was how best to refurbish the recital hall within the existing structure,” said James Matson, AIA, vice president and principal of HGA’s Los Angeles office. “Our design minimizes modifications to the existing building structure while improving acoustics, sightlines, seating capacity, aesthetics and back-of-house functions.”

Clausen Hall was originally built in 1962. It is one of several HGA-driven improvement projects currently underway for the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), part of its Sustainable Building Program, which utilizes more than $6 billion to modernize the district's nine colleges. HGA is also spearheading the new $58 million Student Success Center at East Los Angeles College and the $44 million Science Complex at Los Angeles Harbor College. The program is funded mostly by bond measures approved by voters in 2001, 2003 and 2008.

As in most adaptive reuses, Clausen Hall’s renovation both purges some building elements and carefully reuses others. Exterior upgrades consist primarily of cleaning and repainting the exterior surfaces, replacing metal-frame windows and curtain walls with double-pane low-e glass, and adding custom graphics to increase campus visibility for the music programs. In fact, many of the materials used will have recycled or renewable content and be produced regionally. While exterior upgrades were made to better reflect the building’s function as a music department and maintain its historic charm, interior renovations included realigning existing spaces to better meet academic and acoustic requirements, adding student break-out spaces within corridors, and adding display cases to showcase student accomplishments and events.

HGA and its engineering consultants are also providing all new mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems for improved energy efficiency, indoor climate control, new roofing and window glazing, and acoustic upgrades for proper sound balance. Along with incorporating recycled-content materials, the indoor environmental quality will be enhanced by the use of low-VOC floor finishes and increased controllability of lighting and ventilation.

Clausen Hall is the latest in a series of HGA-led performing arts center projects along the West Coast at higher-education facilities. HGA’s $125 million, 166,000-square-foot Valley Performing Arts Center opened in January at California State University, Northridge. Additionally, HGA recently opened the 48,000-square-foot Napa Valley College Performing Arts Center on the Napa Valley College campus.

Joining Matson on the Clausen Hall project team are Sing-Sing Lee, project designer; Kevin Donaghey, project manager; Jamie Milne Rojek, music specialist; and Gerhard Guth, specifications.

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HGA is an integrated architecture, engineering and planning firm that helps prepare its clients for the future. With offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, California; Minneapolis and Rochester, Minnesota; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Washington, DC, the nationally recognized firm has developed expertise in the arts, community, higher education, healthcare, corporate, and science/technology industries since 1953. HGA’s culture for interdisciplinary collaboration, knowledge sharing and design investiga¬tion enables its clients to achieve success with responsive, innovative and sustainable design. Visit www.HGA.com or follow the firm on Facebook or Twitter.