138The Sepulveda Basin Field House project has been recently honored by the AIA San Fernando Valley, receiving a Design Citation from the organization. A collaborative effort with Landscape Architect Land Images, Efficient Consulting Engineers, CS Legacy Construction, and the City of Los Angeles, the Sepulveda Basin Sports Complex is a 65-acre park laid out along two axes. These dramatic allées of regularly spaced trees interspersed with seating opportunities, picnic spaces, area lights and ample strolling spaces create a very urban, “Tuileries Style” character and serve as the primary gathering/picnicking spaces in the first phase of construction. KFA was engaged to design a pavilion at the entrance of the park that would contain service spaces and serve as a dramatic focal point, marking the entry.

The procession through the center aisle of the Field House is a transition from an urban context into the park, and the use of utility poles sculpts this entry space. Inspired by Richard Serra’s use of massive forms to shape the procession through a space, the poles’ gentle undulation evokes the experience of walking through a forest in the presence of the wind, acknowledging a harmonious relationship between vertical elements and invisible forces.

The pavilions are solid masses of glazed concrete block with brightly painted steel channel roof rafters. The rafters anchor and provide order to the series of poles splayed out from the ground. Built-in seating and game tables sit at the base of the poles and are shaded by the roof structure. The pavilions’ building materials will be featured in the second phase of construction, where they will be used for larger shade structures and park lighting.