Roberts Pavilion, Claremont McKenna College, Los Angeles FE Building, Architecture Images
Roberts Pavilion at Claremont McKenna College
Higher Education Development in LA, California, USA – design by JFAK, Architects
8 Feb 2017
Claremont McKenna College
Design: John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects (JFAK)
Location: Los Angeles, California, California, USA
New Futher Education Building by Morphosis for Emerson College

With Claremont McKenna College?s new Roberts Pavilion, John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects (JFAK) has dramatically redefined what a college athletic venue can be, designing an iconic social hub that brings students and faculty together while demarking a new gateway for the campus that reacts to the push and pull of surrounding buildings, playing fields, and aquatic center.
Roberts Pavilion bends and warps, slants, rises, and sinks with movement and expansive light. To meet the challenges of a compact site, the architects sank the central basketball arena below grade and placed other functions around the edges. The experience of the building is one of lightness and light. Lightness because it appears to hover above the ground plane on a ring of light produced by twelve-foot high sheets of glass on all sides. Light because it is a study in how to optimize daylighting and connects to the world outside with views clear through and from almost any vantage point. For JFAK, light is as much a substance to build with as any other material.

?We wanted the light...