UNEATHED & UNVEILED

Unearthed and Unveiled is the culmination of a semester long, comprehensive studio. This proposed building for the LA Institute for Film Arts and Underground Museum sits at the corner of North Alameda St and Ord St. In LA’s Chinatown. The studio’s focus was in generating a structurally feasible building, with well developed facade articulation, daylighting response, HVAC accommodation, sound attenuation all while balancing a required mass timber structure. By utilizing a host of new digital tools like grasshopper modeling and ladybug daylighting software, the project is able to respond better to site conditions of wind and sun through a weaving double skin structure that plays with the rigid yet organic mass timber structure. The project accommodates an art gallery, digital gallery, library, shop, cafe, and 3 screening rooms among other logistical programs. 

​

Unearthed and Unveiled foregrounds films’ potential as an archaeological tool, tasked with preserving, and displaying aspects of shared memory. This project emphasizes this through a deep connection with the ground plane and an open campus-like plan that invites the public to uses not only the building but also the spaces around them. This emphasis on shared cultural memory is one that imperative given the site sits at the confluence of 4 current or former ethnic enclaves.