PATTERNS has designed a new three story cultural center for West Hollywood, California.  The center, known as Prism, will become a cornerstone of artistic experimentation, carving a new niche for the arts in Southern California.   The facade will be the first in the nation to be constructed entirely out of a resin based composite polycarbonate. Inspired by automotive design supple forms, streamlined detailing and plastic finishes; the façade has a dual aesthetic performance associated to its plastic materiality and responsive to the lively energy of its context: it behaves as a reflectively glossy surface during daylight and as a translucent skin at night.

More about Prism after the break.

PATTERNS’ collaboration with 3Form, an advanced material fabrication company specializing on resin based composites, has led to the center’s dynamic form.  Building surfaces are lift up and down, opening the interior while suspending its mass over the strip and producing a sense of weightiness over passerby pedestrian and vehicle traffic approaching from downhill.  Its formal logic is the outcome of a productive negotiation between the ordering column grid of the existing building and the intense social and physical dynamism of the context.

As seen on E-Architect