Architect-led design-build firm Design Draw Build (DDB) received the highest professional honor award from The American Institute of Architects (AIA) California’s 2024 Architecture at Zero Competition for the design of Agualta STEAM Engine. Now in its thirteenth year, The Architecture at Zero competition engages architecture, design, engineering, and planning professionals to pursue the California Public Utility Commission’s net zero energy targets for enduring design of educational spaces. Managed by AIA CA and funded by Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, and SoCal Gas, the competition’s challenge called for conceptual designs of a new building on Griffith STEAM Magnet Middle School’s campus in East Los Angeles, California. The new building’s design needed to address Los Angeles Unified School District priorities to replace relocatable classrooms, and include science labs, art classrooms, maker spaces, outdoor learning environments, and a teacher workroom.
Out of 72 entries, the esteemed jury selected DDB’s design as it creates an anchor for the local community – transforming Southern California’s commonplace iconography of a water tower into markers of place, sustainable futures, and communal identity. The project was further commended for its robust demonstration on how the design’s energy models thoughtfully develop climate adaptation strategies, lower carbon emissions, and enhance the community’s economic development.
Agualta STEAM Engine is a mass timber structure designed on a modular grid, both for construction efficiency and as a connection to the street grid that defines the neighborhood. The building’s curvilinear floor plates, roofs, positioning of the water towers, and the courtyard orientation of the existing school buildings create a central open plaza that provides opportunities for large community gatherings. The space planning of the workspaces and classrooms is rationally rectilinear to encourage familiar learning environments for the students. The two hubs of these classrooms and labs are arranged around a central double-height collaboration space for activities and outdoor teaching wrapped by the vertical circulation. The contrast between the rational classrooms and the expressionism of the curved organic spaces reinforces the middle school’s STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) educational approach.
“This is a timely project considering the devastation Californians have faced with the past month of wildfires; the competition gave our team the opportunity to showcase the importance of an architect’s role when the built environment conflicts with the natural one.” says DDB Founder and Principal Tyler Kobick, AIA. “We really appreciate the Architecture at Zero team for recognizing our firm’s passion for community resiliency through architecture.” DDB’s site-sensitive design creates an oasis of climate resilience and scholastic achievement within this historically underserved community. A central plaza invites the community to come together for flea markets, parties, classes, and performances; it also provides an inspiring and sustainable sandbox for students to learn, play, create and collaborate.
During increasingly common extreme weather events, the conceptual design functions as a community emergency shelter and neighborhood-scale resource of power and water to help neighbors support each other through droughts, blackouts, and extreme heat events. With on-site electricity generation and water storage, it ensures that tomorrow’s students and their families will be protected from the acute stresses of climate change, while the biophilic learning environment gives them the tools they need to build a greener, brighter future. The new normal in Los Angeles will be one of elongated droughts with extreme heat events, interrupted by irregular downpours from shifting atmospheric rivers. Water will be the crucial resource for Los Angeles’ survival and creating community-scale water resources will be essential to prosperity.
With over 15,000 Angelenos displaced, rebuilding will be a massive undertaking. The DDB team cherishes the opportunity to participate in the crucial conversation on wildfire resiliency in Los Angeles and supporting the 11,000 members of AIA CA and AIA Los Angeles in the enormous challenge that lies ahead. To learn more, and see the full list of winners, visithttps://www.architectureatzero.com.
About Design Draw Build
Design Draw Build (DDB) is an East Bay-based architect-led design-build firm specializing in custom homes, adaptive reuse, and socially impactful housing. The team’s craft-forward approach integrates strong tenets of critical regionalism, anchoring building, and site design to the local context to embrace a complete vision toward landscape stewardship. Founded in 2010, DDB’s multi-disciplinary team consists of licensed architects and builders, a fully integrated team offering both Architecture and Construction Services, led by Principal Tyler Kobick, AIA. With a vision to deliver socially conscious, warm, modern architecture, the DDB team seeks to celebrate the built environment and nurture the natural one through each and every project, giving way to new forms of expression and interaction.
Feature Image Courtesy of: Design Draw Build
