Pugh + Scarpa, Santa Monica, Calif., report that they faced a unique challenge in the design of Jigsaw, a Los Angeles film-editing studio that needed “to provide a stimulating workspace and create an environment that allows for social interaction and provides a place of seclusion.” A film editor lives in a fictional world, represented by the computer screen reflected upon them, the architects maintained. Distractions, like light reflections, need to be blocked out, and so, typically, a film editor’s world revolves around a hermetically closed black box.

To meet the Jigsaw challenge, the architects created such an environment out of a bow-truss warehouse in “a rather featureless neighborhood” in an industrial part of West Los Angeles. The environment is composed of independent interior forms separate from the building envelope, thus one step removed from the lackluster urban surround.

Volumes within a volume
The 5,600-square-foot interior—offices, library, socializing zones, and, most importantly, the editing rooms—fit within a variety of volumes that do not touch the ceiling, allowing the original warehouse space to be read in its entirety. The circulation zone between them extends throughout the entire space, creating a constant notion of movement.

A belt of equally sized service spaces forms the perimeter on two sides, an open kitchen and the reception area make up a third side, and the fourth side is kept clear, allowing daylight to enter through the windows, and passers-by get a glimpse of the central space. In the architects’ words: “Taking up the entire stage that is surrounded by the ancillary rooms, two curvaceous volumes are suspended over a shallow pool of water. Their overwhelming presence can be sensed throughout the space. With a skin of sleek gray lead, they resemble a pair of playing ocean mammals; their heavy bodies in mid-air, escaping the pool, if not the building. The paradox of the inversion of heavy and light is reinforced as the mirror-like surface of the water below reproduces their image and, even more so, when occasionally artificially produced steam sheathes the two volumes like fog, completely detaching them from the ground.”

The eyes have it
Confronting the visitor walking into the space are two giant white translucent eyes made of pixilated screens on the sheared-off ends of the gray volumes. Despite being the most dynamic elements within the space, the most secluded and quiet areas—editing and producers’ rooms—are placed here. The screens are windows that filter the light from the outside, creating a fuzzy condition between darkness and light, thus fostering work on a computer screen. The architects meant them to act as an interface between the private and the public zones, providing visual contact and simultaneously guaranteeing privacy.

From a distance, it is hard to tell what these screens are made of, but a closer look reveals quite ordinary materials: one window is filled bottom-to-top with ping-pong balls while the other is filled with acrylic beads. From a distance, the eye doesn’t read the details, but, as the visitor comes closer, what is beyond becomes sharper and the gaps more apparent, much like an Arabic screen, where the observer inside remains unseen.

Point/counterpoint
This object/space relationship also makes itself known at the level of the overall space. While the volumes within the building envelope have their own distinct form, the space around them is merely an in-between space that takes on the negative shape of the volumes. These interstitial spaces form niches for informal encounters, waiting zones for clients, and interior terraces on the water, that offer views from a different vantage point. The entrance zone acts as a café that facilitates informal meetings and client interaction. Opposite the café is the reception area, “growing out of the linoleum floor material.” The reception desk itself is removed from the entrance door, allowing visitors immediately to take in the space.

“The design of Jigsaw attempts to create a series of balanced tensions—between isolation and interaction, movement and static, light and heavy, and light and dark—generating a complex spatial experience, turning an office space into an inspiring playground,” the architects say. The project recently received a 2004 Merit Award from the AIA California Council.

Copyright 2004 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved. Home Page