Double Major

Clive Wilkinson Architects is upping the ante in the education sector with a ground-up project in Los Angeles.

Edie Cohen -- Interior Design, 3/1/2011 2:19:00 PM

"Diversify, diversify, diversify," Interior Design Hall of Fame member Clive Wilkinson says. "Our port­folio was once dominated by office interiors. Now, higher education accounts for 50 percent of our work."

Clive Wilkinson Architects is upping the ante in this sector with a ground-up project in Los Angeles. Slated for 2013 completion, the complex will unite the media technology department at Santa Monica College with the headquarters of KCRW, the public radio station that currently broadcasts from elsewhere on campus. The 3-acre project unfolds around a courtyard, with a mash-up of professional production studios for KCRW and a range of student facilities to provide on-the-job training-among them a newspaper lab, a film studio, and edit bays. "The fundamental idea connecting the radio station and the college was storytelling," Wilkinson continues. "It heals the schism between work and education, presenting learning as a progressive cycle." Square footage for the new KCRW building and an addition to the college's existing media technology building, also under renovation, totals 65,000 including a screening room that's open to the public. The overall count comes to 213,000 square feet when you factor in a seven-level garage.