The trailer sat there filled with timbers like a giant jigsaw puzzle waiting to be put together. The pieces seemed so simple, each beam, post and joist similar to its neighbor in length and heft but every one was different. Every piece was unique.  About eight years ago I had the opportunity to work on a different type of project. My work was to help to take a life size jigsaw puzzle that was missing pieces and find a way to put it together. I was a part of a team of architects, engineers, contractors and lay people who reconstructed a Hollywood movie set and converted it into an elementary school library.

Movie sets are not buildings in any traditional manner. Typically they are built of simple, somewhat flimsy materials inside of a larger studio building. Often sets are used for as little as a week and then broken down and repurposed for other things.

This movie was different. ‘Life as a House’ was filmed in 2001. The plot featured an unhappy aging architect who decides to build a craftsman home on his family’s longtime dilapidated property. In the course of building this house by hand he finds friendship in a misunderstood neighborhood boy and satisfaction in the work. Kevin Klein and Hayden Christiansen play their imperfect characters and relationships beautifully in the movie, telling a complicated story. The house that slowly grows around them is an analogy for the story and in many scenes almost an engaged character.

The house in this movie was unique. The production team chose, not to build a set house, but in many ways to build a true structure. They decided on a simple craftsman style home with classic post and beam detailing. The house is modest in size, but the posts, beams and joists are all real. The set designers had posts milled specifically for the movie, using classic joinery and details in the finished product. When seen against the backdrop of the ocean it gives the look of a beautiful jewel box carefully constructed by hand, but that is the magic of Hollywood.

In reality the set was only three quarters of a house much like a dollhouse. The interior spaces were open to the elements; the roof was little more than a single layer of shingles over plywood and the building sat on a timber and cinder block foundation, much like a trailer. Once filming had wrapped on the movie the set was no longer needed. All of the reusable elements, the furniture, the lights, cameras and film equipment were packed up for use on another project. The building set was all that remained. It was neither a usable set for anything but this movie or a usable building.

In a stroke of genius one of the members of the film crew saw the set as something more than a pile of timbers. He had a young child at a local elementary school in Los Angeles that needed a new library. Their current facility was not useful and the school, like many in Los Angeles was busting at the seams. There was a small plot of land available on school grounds and the set was the perfect size to sit front and center as their new library!

After some simple negotiations the studio agreed to part ways with the movie set, giving it as a donation to the school. The timbers were deconstructed, stacked in a trucking container and delivered to the property where they would sit for the next year.

When I became involved in the project the rules for the building had been established. We had a basic plan for the library based on the original footprint of the set. We knew the structure and the major aesthetic features. We even had the elevations. What we didn’t have was a working building. Only three quarters of building structure had been supplied, so we had to detail and recreate the timbers, beams and posts for the last quarter of the structure. We also had to design basic building systems including lighting, HVAC, fire alarm systems and even a foundation that could be integrated with the existing timbers.

The design process was similar to that of a renovation, except instead of an existing structure in place we had a kit of parts that we had to use. The parts could be manipulated and altered, but they only fit together one way and their value lay in that construction.

The structure also had to meet building codes. Current codes for school buildings, particularly in Southern California, which has a propensity both for earthquake and brush fires, are especially strict. The structural connections between timbers had to be redesigned to allow for steel plate connections without destroying the existing details. The codes required the building to have fire sprinklers, which again changed the aesthetic.

Timbers and Steel Connections

Slowly and methodically we crafted a design that could alter the existing movie set enough to convert it to a library without losing the overall look and feel of the original design. Careful detailing and an understanding of materials both reused and new helped the team envision a useful building constructed of the shell of a set.

The construction process was similar to any other. The contractors gathered the remaining materials needed, assembled the appropriate craftsmen and put the building back together on the site. They laid a proper foundation, upgraded the exterior walls, installed new electric, HVAC, and sprinklers. The interiors were finished to create an open plan library with reading areas, a circulation desk and stacks of books.

The pile of timbers that remained from the original set could have easily been dumped, burned, chipped or recycled in other ways. There are plenty of sustainable methods to reuse a piece of wood. In this case the vision to reuse the entire framework of a movie set in close to its original form was by far both the most effective and sustainable option available.  While the process took more time, and was probably far more expensive than some other options the results outweigh the costs in the long-term success of that building.

The library at Kenter Canyon Elementary School is a wonderful example of the reinvention of an existing structure. Far from the typical project this building is a testament to the school parents who saw an opportunity in their workplace to recycle old materials in a creative way. Many would classify the project as a folly or a one off, but I think it is an extreme and particularly beautiful example of what can be achieved by rethinking what we might otherwise throw away.

About the Author
Ralph Walker is an architect in New Jersey. He has focused his career on sustainable design and educational design project around the country. Ralph's work and writing on sustainability and educational design have been widely published and his design work has received numerous awards. He can be reached at RWalker12813@gmail.com.

For more information about the project take a look at the following link:

http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/reuse/grants/LGAssist/3rdCycle/LAarticle.htm