The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools houses 4,200 students in an integrated K-12 of six pilot schools, on a 24-acre site. This site, in the Mid-Wilshire District, was formerly the Myron-Hunt designed Ambassador Hotel, where RFK was assassinated in 1968, following his victory speech in the California Primary.
The project marks a distinct shift in typology: California public schools have primarily been ‘one-off’ designs devoid of urban context. This campus aggressively embraces both urban history and urban fabric. By responding to the grids and axes of the surrounding city – and of the hotel that was once seated in it – the school provides cinematic viewpoints, both outside-in and inside-out, that reward the school’s inhabitants with a sense of urban connection and continuity.
The principal challenge of this project was to synthesize the aspirations of a vast range of stakeholders while still forging a work that retains coherence and integrity. The establishment of broad initial principles and values among the client-planning team – related to urbanism, joint use, urgency of school seats, and the pedagogical combination of both campus integration and campus decentralization – provided a framework around which project leadership could cohere and make sound decisions in the face of single-interest advocacies.
A second – physical - challenge was to overcome the divorce of the site’s original grading from the city street system, and to literally - re-ground the site’s perimeter. Bringing the southerly portion of the site (the K-5 Pilot Schools) down 30’ to the level of 8th Street required a substantial investment in re-grading. Through design, the resultant grade differences within the site became opportunities through which to introduce barrier-less and subtle separations between pilot schools– specifically a series of grand terraces descending from the main quad to the K-5 play area and its multi-purpose performance proscenium.
Similarly, bringing the westerly K-12 schools down to 7th Street, allowed both a reintegration with street life and a deferential stepping down of massing from the site’s high, center-point.
A third challenge, in collaboration with LAUSD’s project managers, was to move the District towards new models of sustainable architecture, including: super high-density site utilization; indoor-outdoor program and spaces; under-floor and displacement ventilation for more healthy air delivery; a central mechanical plant; single-ply high albedo roofing; triple-glazing at exposed street conditions; and rapidly renewable/cork, rubber, and linoleum flooring.
The RFK Community Schools marks the most comprehensive public art program in LAUSD’s history, with installation fully integrated into the history, purpose, and architecture of the site.
