contemporary art museum

This comprehensive studio project explored typologies of long-span structural systems within an architectural context. The program — a museum for contemporary architecture in Los Angeles, affectionately dubbed CALA by the faculty — included gallery space, archival storage, lecture hall, offices, lobby, and support programs. The studio emphasized full-spectrum integration: structure and connections, circulation and cores, parking, accessibility, and spatial hierarchy.

The project foregrounds the truss as its primary structural system. In essence, the building becomes an inhabited truss — a spatial armature that delineates program through its own geometry. At each angular inflection, vertical members aggregate to transfer load bidirectionally. Truss density gradates according to structural demand: cantilevered zones thicken, while stable spans remain sparse. Where two trusses overlap, a shared column drops to unify the system, creating a moment of structural reciprocity.

The gallery — the building’s central function — is housed within the only straight truss block, a gesture of clarity and legibility. Secondary programs such as administration occupy angled truss volumes, offering privacy and spatial nesting. Circulation follows the truss logic, threading through cocoons of space embedded within the structural field.

Situated in the Arts District, an area undergoing rapid transformation, the project resists the fortress vernacular common in Los Angeles. The ground floor is conceived as a porous civic platform: open, accessible, and anchored by a single truss bar that touches down. Above, the building appears to hover — a levitating mass wrapped in a perforated façade that glows at night and reads as solid during the day. This duality protects the art within while modulating light and atmosphere. Curved skylights introduce soft, diffuse daylight, lending the interior a sense of quiet luminosity.

The project was recognized for its innovation in rethinking the truss as both structure and spatial syntax. It was selected for presentation to the NAAB accreditation board as a representative work from USC School of Architecture.