ROUGH DIAMOND.

Made for the same basic cost as a conventional building, this school in a Los Angeles suburb provides a stimulating model for institutional architecture that is both experimental and civic.

In outer suburbia east of Los Angeles, the new school realized by Morphosis is noteworthy for two reasons. First, together with a large mixed-use development in Klagenfurt, Austria, it represents the latest stage in the work of the Santa Monica-based practice headed by Thom Mayne. Second, the school is an achievement with socio-political implications in Southern California. In that most privatized of cultures, it provides a model for institutional architecture that is both experimental and civic, a complex architecture that is also public.

The site, in the city of Diamond Bar, is on a gently sloping hill above Interstate 60. This is a landscape dependent upon the automobile. The new school is approached by a winding asphalt road and initially viewed across a vast car park with 700 spaces for both teachers and students. Morphosis projects are perhaps most easily characterized by play between one large move and many smaller constituent pieces. At Diamond Bar, the entire building layers a new weave of construction and volume over the sloping site. A fluid molten mass of architecture slips from the football stadium and running track on the hillside above to subsidiary fields and baseball diamonds on the plateau below.

One large fragment steps forward from this section to help anchor the assemblage and bracket a rather ceremonial entrance. This is the school gymnasium, with the canteen tucked in behind. The building's mass seems to have cracked apart to allow for pedestrian access between its flanks, some of which are of in-situ concrete, some of which have glass in more shaded areas, but most of which are clad in corrugated galvanized steel. There's a strong sense of geology at Diamond Bar, of moving between horizontal and vertical strata. In fact, the project's unorthodox forms cost no more than a traditional-looking school: either would have required intensive engineering given the site conditions.

Classrooms are arranged on descending levels about a broad central thoroughfare. Running east/west, this mid-level plaza offers multiple points of orientation; it provides both exposure and shelter. A secondary axis connects outdoor sports facilities above and below so that although the language at Diamond Ranch is that of today's architectural avant-garde, its underlying organization has a distinct logic and has even some axial similarities to the cardo and decumanus of the Romans. Next to the intersection of Morphosis' axes is the principal's office and a small administrative wing, the hub of the school and clearly visible from the ample car park.

The entire project might be thought of as a double landscape: the surfaces below terraced along the natural fall of the land, the roofline above cut into and eroded for the satisfactory filtration of light and air and to provide views over the sports ground and Interstate below. Three wings project to the north out over the valley with terrace-like outdoor corridors and slightly askew ramps. Intended for younger students these classrooms are lit primarily from the sides. Trusses protrude into the rooms as red-painted structural fragments. Rooms for older students are arranged about intimate courtyards on the upper level. At this higher datum, there are also spaces dedicated to art, for example, and to choir and band practice. Ceilings are typically of suspended perforated metal (another stratum) with, as in the tall entry volume, small light fixtures twinkling through at dusk. Here, the intricate predilections of Morphosis have resulted in masses and voids that -- on a recent afternoon visit -- the co-educat ional student body seems keen to fully utilize and explore (the half-landings on the exposed ramps provide literal hang-out points). Designed to accommodate 2000 students, the school exhibits those patterns of coming-and-going, of activity and rest that urban designers so often aspire towards. Uncompromising as to how skin and structure determine the look of a building, Diamond Ranch possesses and fortifies those humane, collective attributes that many other recent developments only caricature.

Architect

Morphosis, Santa Monica, California, USA

Project team

Thom Mayne, John Enright, Cameron Crockett, David Grant, Fabian Kremkus, Janice Shimizu, Patrick J. Tighe, Sarah Allan, Kaspar Baumeister, Jay Behr, John Bencher, Mark Briggs, Frank Brodbeck, Takashi Ehira, Magdalena Glen, Ivar Gudmunson, George Hernandez, Martin Krammer, Ming Lee, Francisco Mouzo, Christopher Payne, Kinga Racon, Robyn Sambo, Andreas Schaller, Bennet Shen, Mark Sich, Craig Shimahara, Tadao Shimizu, Steve Slaughter, Brandon Welling, Eui-Sung Yi

Associate architect

Thomas Blurock Architects

Landscape architect

Allen Don Fong

Structural engineer

Ove Arup & Partners

Civil engineer

Andreasen Engineering

Photographs

Timothy Hursley

1. The school sits on a gently sloping hill, surrounded by sports fields and parking.

2. Angular forms emerge from the landscape as an extension of the topography.

3, 4. Axial spine of the street is terminated at one end by the school's gymnasium.

5. Dramatically framing the landscape, a canyon-like cleft between teaching blocks leads down to the sports fields.

6. The central open air street, which functions as an informal outdoor room, links the various teaching and recreational volumes.

7. Despite its dislocation from the city, the form of the school is intended to encourage a kind of civic and social life.

8. Part of the axial Street.

9. A basic palette of raw concrete and corrugated galvanized steel gives the buildings a functional, industrial quality. Despite the apparent formal complexity, Morphosis' school cost no more than a more conventional one.

10. Daylight from landscaped patio courtyards filters into classrooms.

11. Band practice forms an impromptu moment of theatre on the street.