The El Modena High School campus, located in Orange, California was originally built in 1965.  The proposal for a reading room and art gallery addition to the existing library was initiated by the school’s education foundation.  The funding to accomplish the project will be raised through donations to the foundation.  A preliminary design was needed to help the foundation achieve their fund raising goals.

Multiple design options were developed and narrowed down to two options that were modeled for the client to make a final selection.

The designs keep with the clean modern lines of the original campus buildings yet have an updated appearance.  Daylight into the space was a main consideration, as it is for any space that displays art and is a reading room.  Northern facades were maximized with as much glass as possible.  The southern facades were given deep overhangs at any glass to screen out the direct sunlight.  The client’s original idea for the addition was to divide the new addition into two separate rooms – one for reading and one for the art gallery.  The final design combined the two aspects of the program, reading and art,  into one space, which would give a more open feeling to the total space.