Michael Maltzan's Inner-City Arts project wins excellence award

The Inner-City Arts project in downtown L.A. has received a top award in urban planning and architecture. The Rudy Bruner Foundation has chosen the arts education center from 87 applicants for its Gold Medal Award for Urban Excellence. The center was founded in 1989 and was designed by architect Michael Maltzan.

ICA, which sits on a 1-acre site in the skid row area of downtown, creates programs that allow professional artists to interact with students in a real studio environment. The center serves up to 16,000 at-risk students per year at no cost to the students or their families.

The Rudy Bruner award comes with a $50,000 prize that will go toward arts instruction programs for ICA students. In its citation, the selection committee commended the center for addressing homelessness and the challenges facing public schools. The committee also cited the positive impact of the ICA program on impoverished or transient children.

Maltzan, who started his involvement with ICA in 1993, told Culture Monster that the project

"came about after the L.A. riots and I was looking for ways to engage more deeply with the issues confronting the city." The architect and his team recently completed the third phase of the campus, which includes a library and learning center, a 99-seat arts theater and additional administrative space.

The architect worked with landscape design firm Nancy Goslee Power and Associates, which oversaw the campus' garden.

"ICA is moving from a model of being primarily focused on education to really having the potential to be a collective space for the community," Maltzan said.

Other Rudy Bruner finalists were the Community Chalkboard and Podium in Charlottesville, Va; the Hunts Point Riverside Park in the Bronx; Millennium Park in Chicago; and St. Joseph Rebuild Center in New Orleans.

In his review, Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne wrote that "ICA's decision to paint its entire campus white is part provocation, part stubborn declaration of hope. ... Whiteness equals constancy, and the brighter the better."

You can view an architectural photo gallery of the ICA complex and read Hawthorne's full review of the project here.

-- David Ng

Photo: An exterior view of the Inner-City Arts campus in downtown L.A. Credit: Iwan Baan

Comments

[Donald Frazell]

Sounds like a good idea, but hope it teaches more than art. That it shows kids that the world is a big place, There are very few arts jobs out there, dont need more going into it with no hope of developing skills. But would be great if encouraging a well rounded, ambitious and knowledgable child. That would get major props. And if the child is truly talented, then go for it, we should all pursue not just what we love, but what we are truly good at.

[Teacher]

Inner City Arts provides a great service for students who have the opportunity to learn there and for teachers who take their "Creativity in the Classroom" course, in which teachers learn to integrate the arts into other subject matters.

Making teachers more comfortable with the arts doesn't help them train their students to be artists. It helps them make learning more meaningful. Using theater techniques to teach verbs may not turn a child into a Tony award winner, but might help that student become a competent writer -- a skill needed in most careers. To quote Dana Gioia, the former NEA chair: "The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society."

[Donald Frazell]

That is a great definition of arts educational prpose, but is not described as such above. If they do teach teachers about how art can be involved in history, math, social sciences, to help produce well rounded children, then it is an excellent use of funding. However, it states it wants to have a community space, a community that is transitory in that area, not truly a community at all, but a half way house. Where the goal should be to get the kids out, and to show them a bigger world. Most are trapped and see little beyond its own limited social strata, took in kids in such situations through basketball, sports does this all the time, far more than arts. .And on both a volunteer basis, and through shoe sponsored travel teams. Which has their own political issues.

So i hope funds are spent on people, not salaries or things. Preparing already employed and paid teachers, and kids, not artists. Who need to volunteer as all of us do. If the well rounded child is the goal, may god be with you.A salaammu leikum.