Arts Center

2016

La Cañada Flintridge, California

OVERVIEW

Arts Center transforms a 1950s gymatorium into a dedicated home for performance, exhibition, and arts education at Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy. Through a comprehensive remodel and seismic retrofit, Pica + Sullivan Architects reimagined the building as a state-of-the-art cultural venue and campus gathering place, combining technical performance upgrades with gracious front-of-house spaces and new facilities for creative learning.

CLIENT

Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy is an independent, Catholic, Dominican, college-preparatory school for young women. The project was shaped by the academy’s long history of using the original auditorium as a campus gathering place for performances, ceremonies, classes, and events, and by its goal to create a venue dedicated to nurturing and showcasing the visual and performing arts.

PROJECT SCOPE

Project Size: 8,300 SF remodel

Opening Date: 2016

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN GOALS

The design set out to convert a heavily used multipurpose building into a purpose-built arts destination that could better support performance, exhibition, and technical training. Key goals included improving acoustics and sight lines, expanding stage functionality, modernizing building systems, and creating a more gracious sequence of arrival and gathering spaces for students, families, and guests.

KEY INTERVENTIONS

The renovation included structural and seismic retrofit of the existing Spanish Colonial building, broadening and lengthening of the stage, and the integration of a specialized audience chamber air delivery system. New program elements include an elegant pre-function lobby and art gallery, a 237-seat proscenium theater, advanced audio-visual and theatrical lighting systems, a ceramics studio with exterior kiln area, new restrooms, a stagecraft workshop, dressing rooms, and a control room/teaching lab for hands-on theater technology instruction.

The Mozilo Family Center for the Arts at the Flintridge Sacred Arts Academy, an educational architectural project in Southern California, as seen from the parking lot, a tower topped with a cross visible at the front of the building.

Sunset at a small exterior staircase entrance to the Mozilo Family Center for the Arts at the Flintridge Sacred Arts Academy, an educational architectural project in Southern California. The door faces the camera, the interior faintly visible through the glass.

Interior view of a door leading out to a landing at the Mozilo Family Center for the Arts at the Flintridge Sacred Arts Academy, an educational architectural project in Southern California. A view of the surrounding neighborhood and forests is visible through the glass windows and doors.

An interior display room at the Mozilo Family Center for the Arts at the Flintridge Sacred Arts Academy, an educational architectural project in Southern California. Two wooden display cases with glass tops sit in the center of the room, while a larger display case is recessed in the wall containing photographs. Signs and a TV are on the adjacent wall to the larger display case.

Female students dance on stage dressed in modern clothes at the Mozilo Family Center for the Arts at the Flintridge Sacred Arts Academy, an educational architectural project in Southern California. Two benches are on stage behind them on the left and right. A figure is lying on the right bench.

Female students dance ballet on stage at the Mozilo Family Center for the Arts at the Flintridge Sacred Arts Academy, an educational architectural project in Southern California.

Two female student ballerinas leap into the air on stage at the Mozilo Family Center for the Arts at the Flintridge Sacred Arts Academy, an educational architectural project in Southern California.

OUTCOME

The completed Arts Center and Mozilo Family Theatre gave Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy a dedicated venue for performance, exhibition, and arts education while preserving and upgrading an important campus building. The project enhances the student experience, supports a wide range of creative programs, and creates a memorable gathering place for the broader school community.