Otis College of Art and Design Bronya and Andy Galef Fine Arts Center and Ben Maltz Gallery

Otis College of Art & Design, founded in 1918 near downtown Los Angeles, moved to its current West Los Angeles location in 1997. The existing building, designed by Elliot Noyes in 1965, is a seven-story office building.

Although the renovated structure serves many of the school’s functions well, its low ceilings and lack of sufficient daylight made it inadequate for a number of important functions. The new studio building houses large-scale sculpture, painting, drawing, ceramic and video studios, critique rooms and offices. It also houses the Ben Maltz Gallery for traveling museum shows as well as the Bolsky Gallery for student exhibitions.
An open site adjacent to the original building on Lincoln Boulevard was selected by the College to accommodate the new 40,000-square-feet studio/gallery building. FF&P designed the building to be square in plan to achieve maximum economy and flexibility. The square is rotated on the site with respect to its neighboring buildings. The resulting triangular spaces serve as: entry plazas, installation and event spaces, and outdoor work areas adjacent to ground level studios. The building is sheathed in silver painted corrugated aluminum to reflect changing sky and landscape colors. An external stair and elevator tower contrasts with the graphically simple elevations. This articulated element serves as a focal point of the campus and functions for event seating and stage.
Daylight functions as a predominant material in all areas of the building.
Interior planning emphasizes large open studios and classrooms defined by non-structural partition walls. The structural frame has only four interior columns per 20,000-square-feet floor, allowing for modifications to interior wall to accommodate varied modes of art making.