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But before that work is even mapped out Maltzan will develop an “Academic Master Plan” for the campus, re-thinking how the college uses its facilities to adapt to new technologies and to inter-disciplinary education models. Maltzan will also oversee the organization of buildings and public spaces on the hillside and the rapidly-expanding south campus in downtown Pasadena. The first step in that plan, said Maltzan, is to “spend a lot of time with the art center community: students, faculty, administration and alumni. The information we get from that will be a big part of how we move forward,” he said.
Leading off the south campus expansion Maltzan will design the reuse of an existing post office mail distribution center at 870 S. Raymond Ave, adjacent to Daly Genik’s reuse of an existing wind tunnel facility, which was completed for the school in 2004. The program for the poured concrete postal building has not been finalized, but it’s likely that the 35,000 square foot space, which sits on a 2.5-acre lot, will be a center for fabrication and prototyping.
The post office property is expected to be ready for classes by Fall 2013, but a final budget and timeline for all the projects has not yet been finalized, said school president Lorne Buchman. Art Center will pay for much of the work with proceeds from a recent bond issue, and will be launching a major capital campaign to pay off that debt. Nearly five million of the seven million dollar cost to purchase the post office building came from alumni donations, added Buchman.
Buckman was sure to add that, “whatever we do building-wise is serving the school’s educational mission.” Buchman’s predecessor Richard Koshalek was reportedly pushed out after factions within the school felt he was focusing more on architecture than on education. Frank Gehry had been working to design a $45 million design research complex on the hillside campus until that plan was scratched in 2009. That plan had originally called for a number of new buildings by Gehry and Alvaro Siza, but was scaled down.
