Brentwood West Campus Saltair Lower School

Brentwood School West Campus

Saltair Lower School

Los Angeles, California

Implemented as part of an ambitious 30-year campus master plan, the new Saltair Lower School Building is designed for K-5 students and offers both indoor and outdoor opportunities for learning to stimulate curiousity, creativity and self-confidence through art, music, and science.

Pfeiffer designed the building with careful consideration of the use of colors, materials, and scale in a child-centric design; it provides kindergarten rooms and 5th grade classrooms, spaces for art, music and science, and updated child care facilities for school employees. The building also features a large, multi-purpose activity room with glass doors that open onto a renovated exterior courtyard with space for teachers and outdoor meetings. In addition to a science courtyard, outdoor spaces include a daycare play yard, kindergarten exploration area, and a sports court that increases the play area by 30%.

Sustainability was an important consideration for the project, both as an expression of Brentwood School’s environmental stewardship goals and as good contextual design that considers a building’s relationship to neighboring spaces and structures – in this case, the new building’s adjacency to an outdoor dining area. Features such as operable windows in classrooms and offices result in a more energy-efficient building, while drought-tolerant vegetation throughout the site gracefully integrates the building into the campus and helps conserve water.

Project Data

Complete
28,000 sf (not including parking area)
34,950 sf (w/ parking area)

Program & Highlights

Kindergarten Classroom
Music Classroom
Multipurpose Activity/Meeting Room
Science Classroom
Science Courtyard
Outdoor Dining Plaza
Daycare Center & Play Yard
Arboretum

“. . . I wanted to let you know that all I heard all day, and all I’ve heard for the last couple of weeks, as teachers have been settling into the building, is how special the building is, how wonderful it is. . . . And all I heard over and over again, is what a wonderful building, what great space, what nice finishes. Everybody’s in love with the building. And I wanted to share that with you, and hopefully you’ll share that with your team. . . Their work, your work is greatly appreciated.“
̶ Victor Pesiri, Former Director of Facilities and Construction

Collaborators