WEINGART CENTER DINING / MULTI USE PATIO

Los Angeles, CA: 199_

A 6,000 sf project serving as the outdoor recreational and gathering space for a homeless shelter’s 300 staff and 600 clients, located in L.A.’s Skid Row. The site is behind and across an alley from the shelter’s 13-story main building, and is accessed from a one-story structure (the cafeteria) on its west side.

The concrete patio is lined on 3 sides by a lightweight steel shade/storage structure fronted by moveable translucent plastic panels. Along one side of the space the panels screen (but may be lifted to service) an existing utility cabinet, roof access ladder and assorted gas/plumbing/electrical hardware. On the other two flanks, the panels may be raised to provide shade for those dining at the tables underneath; when lowered again, they conceal and secure the moveable furniture behind. In the evening, the panels on all sides may, be backlit (when lowered, as for basketball), or uplit (when raised, as for dining or larger events). Like the panels, the wheeled dining tables are moveable. So are the 8 ornamental (purple plum) trees in rolling planter boxes. Both the dining tables and trees may be assembled into any one of a number of spatial arrangements depending upon the activity the patio must accommodate. Six of these positions are indicated by marks sandblasted into the court surface. In the middle of the enclosure, an infrastructural core supports a series of areas of differing program which radiate about it and subdivide the larger space. One of these, an outdoor classroom, sports a chalkboard which also swings open to reveal a projection surface upon which films may be shown. A second is a basketball (half)court, whose glass backboard cantilevers from the core. Others are the open pit barbeque/hearth, whose battered profile is faced in terracotta; and the drinking fountain and spigot/hose bib, which protrude from a tile surface. The glazed pale-yellow porcelain indexes the path of the water supply line as it extends west from the core to the water supply at the cafeteria kitchen.

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