The new complex on Grand Avenue in the heart of the city will include four "academies": theater, visual arts, music and dance, each with its own auditoriums, workshops and administrative premises. 1,700 schoolchildren in grades 9-12 will study there. The art school is a new phenomenon in Los Angeles, thanks to the City Board of Education's ambitious plan to build 132 new schools by 2012.
The building "Coop Himmelb (l) ay" was erected opposite the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels by Raphael Moneo, near the Disney Frank Gehry Concert Hall and the Arata Isozaki Museum of Contemporary Art. This key location is reflected in the architecture of the building: the bell tower of the cathedral is echoed by the steel tower of the school, installed on the concrete volume of the auditorium for 1000 spectators, which will be both a training base for students and a new city theater. The tower was supposed to become a "banquet hall" for rent, but such a functional purpose is prohibited by local school laws, so now it "only" plays the role of a sculptural "beacon" of the complex visible from afar. Around its base is a ramp in the shape of the number 9, the school's serial number. The pyramid of the theatrical foyer of glass and metal serves as the main entrance to the complex, overlooking the Grand Avenue. Nearby, there is an educational building of the Academy of Fine Arts, a rectangular block with different-sized circles of window openings. The centerpiece of the campus is the library's steel cone, illuminated from above through a huge oculus.
The school will open in September 2009, although it was originally supposed to be commissioned this fall: the reason for the delay is not only the structural difficulties of the Coop Himmelb (l) ay project, but also the finds discovered during the construction work during the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. requiring archaeological excavations.
