Construction began last fall on the 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. The $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 renovation includes the expansion of the 190-seat recital hall and 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.
The renovation purges some building elements and carefully reuses others. Exterior upgrades consist primarily of cleaning and repainting the exterior surfaces, replacing metal-frame windows and curtainwalls with double-pane low-e glass, and adding custom graphics to increase campus visibility for the music programs. Many of the materials used will have recycled or renewable content and be produced regionally.
Exterior upgrades were made to better reflect the building's function as a music department and maintain its historical charm, and the interior renovations included realigning spaces to better meet academic and acoustic requirements, adding student breakout spaces within corridors, and adding display cases to showcase student accomplishments and events.
The project, due for completion this year, was designed by HGA Architects and Engineers (Los Angeles).
