The Art Center Sinclair Pavilion’s 2,000 square-foot lounge, constructed largely of glass and steel, is open to the surrounding landscape, creating an informal plaza equipped with a small kitchen. Hodgetts + Fung incorporated interactive structural design elements such as a “Lamborghini-like entrance door,” and a large, trapezoidal glass facade that students can open and close by turning a crank – a design element intended to further students’ understanding of physical design and structural dynamics. The project won a Merit Award for Design Excellence from AIA|LA and an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects Pasadena/Foothill Chapter. Appreciating how the striking juxtaposition of shapes lends a sense of dynamism and action, Jury panelists noted the “kinetic and transforming aspects of this project and its relationship to a setting of interaction among students who can eat, relax and discuss their work.” Jurors moreover found the structure and its enclosure clearly organized and skillfully detailed, deeming it an “inventive project” that “emerges from the site’s topography,” and “completely blurs the definitions between interior and exterior space.”
