NOISES
• Year/Term: 3rd Year/ Winter & Spring 2021
• Site: Port of Los Angeles
• Use: Library/ Student Union
Noise is a hybrid library/student union for a newly proposed Historically Black College and University (HBCU) at the Port of Los Angeles. The abandoned industrial pier that is 1.2 million square feet has been designed for 1,000 HCBU students. Aside from the library/ student union, there are 6 colleges, a stadium, and administrative buildings along with several outdoor spaces included in the campus masterplan.
The project, which serves as a crucial anchor point on the campus, strives to open a dynamic dialogue about how African American individuals view themselves, their own communities, and how they interact with the world outside of their communities. The concept of “noise” suggests a catalytic condition that promotes fluidity and provocation in this social conversation.
Biggie Biggie Biggie by Mark Bradford
The project's conceptualization started with an analysis transformation of Mark Bradford's (a prominent African American artist) cultural map painting of Los Angeles, Biggie, Biggie, Biggie. The painting is visually divided into the black center and its surrounding “noises” of other colors. Based on this interpretation, the project intends to elaborate this visual effect and discuss the insider and outsider dynamics within African American communities.
Ground Floor Plan
Second Floor Plan
The building program consists of large public spaces, accessible to the public with atrium, reception, theater, dinning, cafe, meeting rooms, student club services, reading rooms, archive space, gallery, and individual/group study spaces.
The ground floor contains public dining and gathering space, with the staircase in the atrium as a thread that connects different floors and programs. There is a tension between the protective hubs spread throughout the building for small group gathering and the categorized/noncategorized library that represents the idea of “noises,” where one expands the sense of “us” through extensive reading and thinking.
The envelope is a double skinned system with expanded aluminum mesh on the outside of the glass curtain wall, to both express a sense of peaceful noises and to merge the building into its industrial context.
