SMC Proposed Media-Technology Complex Wins Design Award

By Lookout Staff

December 18, 2009 -- Furthering its reputation as a champion of cutting-edge design, Santa Monica College has won a major local award for its proposed Media & Technology Complex at the Academy of Entertainment & Technology.

The design for the complex -- which would expand the Academy satellite campus to bring together media programs, including KCRW -- won a creativity award from the Los Angeles Urban Land Institute, the college announced this week.

"The new facility will provide our students the opportunity to train using the newest media technologies giving them real world experience in digital radio, television and web-based media," said SMC Director of Facilities Planning Greg Brown.

The design by Clive Wilkinson Architects of West Hollywood won in the "Place" category in the Los Angeles Real Creativity Awards presented for innovative design that "are helping to change the world (and our lives) -- as Angelinos, Americans and global citizens" through "extraordinary vision and creative action."

"The new Academy of Entertainment Technology campus is organized around a courtyard that should amplify synergies between the different media streams by accommodating a range of different events," said Clive Wilkinson, architect for the project. "It further provides a large communal space that acts as a heart for the media community."

technology, graphic design and interior architectural design programs -- is conceived as a way to "bring together synergistic media programs to form a creative community," college officials said.

In addition to these programs, the new complex would house communications, journalism, radio and film "to form a rich cluster of convergent specialties that would feed off each other's creativity and provoke new directions in future media development," according to the creativity awards web site.

The design calls for a new 30,000-square-foot building that would be added to the Academy site to house computer classrooms, a student radio station, production spaces, edit bays, new server room, TV studio and control rooms, art studio, café and a 180-seat auditorium. An accompanying 430-space parking garage would be included to replace the surface parking spaces currently on the site.

In addition, the plan calls for a 34,000-square-foot, three-story structure to house KCRW, which is currently in the basement of the Cayton Associated Students building on the SMC main campus. All buildings are being designed to achieve LEED Silver Certification.

The $61.2 million project is bankrolled with funds from Measure AA, the 2008 bond measure approved by Santa Monica-Malibu voters ($57.5 million), and the KCRW Foundation ($3.7 million),

The project is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2013.

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"the new complex would house communications, journalism, radio and film"

to "bring together synergistic media programs to form a creative community,"

college officials