Art Center College of Design’s campus has been tucked away into Pasadena’s Linda Vista Hills for over thirty years. The school began an ambitious plan to develop a satellite campus near the center of Pasadena’s downtown. South Campus represents many of the challenges faced by urban campuses across the United States: how do you find enough space to meet program needs and build in an environmentally conscious way" Can a project that is intended to transform an institution perform as an urban transformer as well" Art Center’s innovative solution was to embrace the existing context through a combination of reuse and reclamation to rebuild the urban fabric of this industrial sector.
Photography: Benny Chan/fotoworks, Nic Lehoux The first in a planned series of buildings is the Graduate Fine Arts & Public Education, or South Campus, Building. The original wind tunnel building complex was built by Caltech after World War II and was altered several times during the intervening years. As a result, the building had very few windows or access to the street and a convoluted floor plan. A primary goal of the design was to create a physical connection between the main

wind tunnel building, the accessory structures, its activities, and passers-by on the street while reflecting the school’s own history of innovation by using technological advances in both design and engineering.
Photography: Benny Chan/fotoworks, Nic Lehoux
The exterior was simp...