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KFA’s Monica Rodriguez has been helping kids through mentor opportunities. We asked Monica a few questions about her experience working with the SPARK mentoring program.

How did you get started as a Spark mentor?

While I was in college at USC, I tutored a friend’s daughter in high school algebra. Since then, helping kids and mentoring has always been important to me. Then a couple of years ago AIA Los Angeles partnered with Para Los Niño’s Charter School and started an Architecture Mentoring Program with the PLN 6th grade class, which I helped develop along with volunteers from other architecture firms. Through my association with the PLN Architecture Mentoring Program, I found out about the opportunity to become a Spark mentor.

How long ago did you start working with Para los Niños?

The Architecture Mentoring Program at Para Los Niños is in its third year now and this is my first year as a Spark mentor.

Why is being a mentor significant to you?

Mentoring grade school kids with a similar background as myself gives me the opportunity to influence and inspire them to want to graduate from high school and continue on to college and eventually have a career and contribute to society.

Tell me more about the Spark Mentoring Program, what is a typical meeting like with the student you are mentoring?

Ann, the student from a local middle school that I am mentoring this semester, comes to the office once a week for 2 hours. We spend the first half hour or so talking so that I can get an understanding of what interests Ann. She is also introduced to the world of architecture through my work here at KFA. We’re halfway through the program now; eventually she and I will work on a project that takes her interests/hobbies and my professional work and we will present it at Spark’s Discovery Night.

What is the Discovery night all about?

Discovery Night is the culmination to the mentoring program; it’s the night where all the participating students present their projects to fellow students, teachers, parents and mentors. I’ve not been to a Discovery Night yet, but from what I hear it’s a lot of fun. Both Ann and I are looking forward to Discovery Night; her project is going to rock! To give you a hint, it combines her love of animals and her interest in restaurant management. I can’t tell you more because someone could steal our fabulous idea.

What has your experience being a mentor with the two programs been like?

Mentoring enriches my life and helps me appreciate my own journey and be thankful for what I have been able to achieve so far. It’s also empowering to know that I am influencing and helping teach the children of our future.

To find out more about the Spark mentoring program and how you can become a volunteer click here.

KFA is pleased to be working with MGA Entertainment on their new 24 acre corporate campus in Chatsworth. The new MGA headquarters building, a former LA Times printing facility, will be surrounded by 4 buildings containing 700 units, retail and parking. Key to the design is the connective tissue, which ties the campus together. Various nodes, each comprised of different social zones and unique amenities, define the character of the immediate locale and are connected by landscaped pedestrian paths. Woven through the perimeter of the project is a trail that is both a promenade and an exercise path, landscaped with canopy trees, native shrubs and drought tolerant grasses which connect the campus to the surrounding natural landscape.

The campus has three main entry points along the perimeter: the Winnetka entry, the Transit Plaza entry at Prairie, and the Retail Plaza entry. Each node organizes a connection between the surrounding neighborhood and the project, establishing a hierarchy of integration into the community and within the campus. Vehicular access is designed to transition quickly to the parking areas, and to further mitigate the visual impact of parking structures throughout the site, housing units and amenities discreetly wrap the structure facades. Circulating from the campus Transit Plaza, a shuttle provides residents and employees linkage to regional transit centers, and a new bicycle lane ties into the existing L.A. City bike lane.

Central to the project is the MGA Corporate Headquarters, which will house production, light industrial and creative office space, and include a day care/learning center for MGA employees and residents. Large, sweeping graphic fins added to the façade provide employees and residents a striking greeting at the Entry Plaza. Anchoring the Plaza is a stepped amphitheater, which climbs the parking garage and breaks into terraced landscaped plateaus, connecting the Plaza with the mountain-view amenities on the garage roof – a clubhouse, pool, sports courts and the Community Gardens Park.

Other nodes distributed throughout the site include the Sun Plaza, featuring a pool, gym, BBQ area and kitchen garden. Citrus trees, planted between the fins of the MGA building, add color and fragrance along the sidewalk connecting the Sun Plaza and MGA Plaza. The Village Green utilizes an existing lawn and offers a picnic area, tot lot and movie night projection screen against the wall of the MGA building. The Retail Plaza’s shaded paseo connects directly to the pedestrian crosswalk, tying the campus to existing retail across Winnetka.

In addition to the MGA Headquarters, four other campus buildings, comprising almost 1,000,000 SF, open out into the community to define the street edges, but also turn inward to define campus spaces. The buildings tie to each other thematically, incorporating the quiet natural palette of the surrounding hillsides mixed with playful bursts of color and texture. The buildings act to frame exterior “rooms” throughout the site, emphasizing the organizing nodes that connect the campus into a unified whole.