Scouting, Designing and Building a New Campus

Back in 2021, it was decided that Gnomon was going to explore the idea of a new campus. Our lease was set to expire in a couple years and we had heard that, due to Covid, there was an increase in vacant commercial property around Los Angeles. Our home at the time, Television Center, was a historic studio lot which was iconic, cool and quirky, but it was also 100 years old. Things were showing their age, the ownership of the property changed hands twice in a year, and it was beginning to feel… sketchy.

Over the course of a few months, our agent Jake Zacuto introduced us to many possible locations all over Los Angeles, from Burbank to Culver City, but ultimately we settled on North Hollywood. The NohoWest development complex was recently completed and offered a ton of amenities, while being centrally located; an important criteria for both our students and instructors. Making the final decision to move was not easy, nor was it made lightly. I spent a few months pondering it as we deeply considered the pros and cons, visualizing what it would be like to move, to design a new campus and ultimately, create a new home that our community could thrive in.

Once negotiations had settled, we were set to build a 45,000 sqft campus across three floors with a blank slate. The space was completely empty with no walls, just columns every 25 feet and 20 foot high ceilings. I spent most of 2023 designing the campus, from the floor plans (walls, classroom layouts, offices, lounges, etc), to the placement of every single print of student work, movie poster, light fixture, wall screens, and so on. I then supervised construction with the architects, MMA, and primary contractor, Dempsey Construction.

Raw Site, Empty Shell, Pre-Construction

Floor Plans

Working with MMA Architecture, the floorplans were developed collaboratively as we had to make sure that all of our existing computer labs would fit precisely and efficiently into their new rooms, while executing a new flow for the campus that took advantage of being able to start from a clean slate. For example, having the gallery next to reception, as opposed to a different building half a block away at our old campus.

We tackled the floorplans in 2D first and once I had them locked in, MMA built out the floorplans in 3D using AutoCAD. Luckily, MMA already had 3D CAD files for the NohoWest property which we could use as a starting point. We were then delivered files from AutoCAD for the building with all walls, windows and doors in place. I enlisted the help of Anton Napierala, Gnomon’s Games Lead, to convert those files into Maya/Unreal with better topology, UVs and model separation so that they would be easier to work with.

3D Layout and Design using Unreal, Twinmotion and Maya

The initial use of 3D was to confirm wall placements and flow once we had the AutoCAD file from MMA Architecture converted into game engine friendly geometry. I did this in Unreal Engine and Twinmotion as they provided a more intuitive way to virtually walk around. During this phase I was primarily adjusting wall and window locations, heights, and so on.

Once the floorplans were final and approved by MMA, I then needed to move on to layout, design and lighting using Maya and Redshift. I first enlisted the help of my friend Greg Downing to scan all of the old campus. Having accurate scans in Maya at correct scale of all of our furniture, classrooms, sculptures, etc was a huge help for initial planning. I also brought on my friend Jonathan Berube who came up with some very cool design ideas for the outdoor patios and reception area, many of which made it to the final build. Lastly, Gnomon wouldn’t be Gnomon without the steel work of the insanely talented Scot Brown. I initially brought Scot onto the project for a new, and huge, reception desk but he ended up also creating additional steel structures for reception, the patios, atrium and student store.

Lighting Plans

Once the layout of walls and furniture were complete, the next task was to design the lighting. Ultimately I needed to first focus on materials for the entire space so that I could create relatively accurate renders. I also needed to design the size and placement for all wall hanging prints, posters and screens as the lighting would need to accommodate those as well via track lighting.

This ended up being a pretty long process of determining light types, intensity and temperature, finding light fixtures that we would use, and then placing all of them in Maya. I used IES profiles for all light fixtures that had them available and ultimately ended up with 52 unique light fixtures. Top down lighting plans were then created in Maya, below, which were provided to the electrical contractor, Sierra West. In the lighting plans each light fixture has an letter identifier (i.e. ‘AA’, ‘BB’) as well as its height off the floor (AFF, aka Above Finished Floor).

Renders: Exterior, Reception and Top Floor

Second Floor Mezzanine, Student Lounge

Sound Stage

Ground Floor Common Areas

Lecture Rooms

Studios

Computer Labs

Atrium and Student Store

Fabrication Plans

The new campus would require a variety of new custom made elements. I designed most of these while laying out the spaces and then, depending on the item, provided the fabricators either orthographic plans or perspective screengrabs with measurements. Scot Brown handled the new reception desk (contributing many of his own material and design ideas), gallery doors (design by Jonathan Berube), student store shelving and a few other items of his own design such as the patio fencing. Parkman Woodworks built the steel/wood tables for the patios and the heavy-duty steel vertical monitor stands for the atrium. All built-in cabinetry for the sculpture and drawing studios were built by a Dempsey subcontractor. The Pac-Man wall feature was designed by Jonathan Berube. After having little luck finding someone to build it, I built it much of it myself using black iron plumber’s pipe that I got from Amazon. I did, however, find someone on Etsy who handled the pipework that required electrical wiring for the light bulbs. The Pac-Man and Ghost characters were then CNC plasma cut by Brian at Scot Brown’s studio.

Surfaces. I wanted the walls in the third floor lounge to look like concrete, while Berube had the idea of etching GNOMON on the concrete floor. Thankfully, I eventually found Dio Ceballos and his skilled team at Studios Colibri. Took about a week for them to do these by hand in the space and they turned out awesome. I also thought it would be cool to have Hannah Webb, aka The Obanoth, create a huge hand painted mural on the ground floor. Hannah came up with a rad snake design for a 50’x20’ mural. I don’t usually expect to approve someone’s first idea but she nailed it.

Construction

Construction started in August of 2023 and completed in July of 2024. Dempsey Construction was the primary contractor and while there were unforeseen delays, as to be expected, they ultimately did exceptional work and were very cool to work with. They were also super patient with me as I pretended to be an interior designer and architect for a couple years.

The build began by framing walls with aluminum studs, then electrical, HVAC, drywall, paint, grinding/staining floors, etc., etc. So many big, and little, things have to happen to take a raw space and convert it to a final state. So many skilled people, so many trades. Everyone was cool.

We also installed a 100% brand new network infrastructure at Noho under the supervision of our CTO Eric Miller, with a new server, switches and a 10G fiber backbone throughout the facility. All projectors and screens for labs and the stage are also brand new and 4k.

Virtually all prints of student work around the new campus were also replaced with new work as, due to the higher ceilings, we needed bigger prints. I chose all the prints, put them in Maya to figure out sizes, and coordinated printing with our local vendor who luckily was able to print, deliver and hang. I also coordinated new custom wallpapers for three areas with Riot Printing using student work and an amazing huge mural by Cameron Davis for the student store.

Campus Photos

The new campus officially opened on July 15th for the 2024 Summer Term, after a five week ‘break’. That was a crazy time, when we packed up and moved 35,000 sqft of stuff with the help of an exceptional moving company, CPM. With 25 years of custom steel furniture, much of which needed to be cut and rewelded, artwork, sculptures, arcade games, electrical work, etc… this was no small endeavor.

I must thank Gentle Giant Studios and Sideshow Collectibles for their generous donations of lifesize statues for the new campus. Gnomon already had an awesome Stormtrooper that JJ Abrams gave us when The Force Awakens came out, and a lifesize Neytiri (Avatar) from Gentle Giant, but for the new campus I reached out to Gentle Giant and Sideshow to see if they may have anything to display. We ended up with two super cool life-size Death Troopers from Gentle Giant (Rogue One) and a life-size Iron Man, Witch King and Sylvanas Windrunner from Sideshow. So cool.

Below are photos from the first couple terms at the new campus as it came to life, including a few cool events and visitors.

Photography by Substance Media and @lizricephotography

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Closing Thoughts…

While a ton of work, moving Gnomon was a once in a lifetime experience for me. As someone who had designed Gnomon’s old campus, but gradually over 25 years, this was a daunting task. Doing something this big all at once was exciting and stressful but, ultimately, super rewarding. Seeing my renders become real was… surreal. While in hindsight the experience was a blur of work, I am quite proud of the end result and happy that our staff, students and teachers have responded so positively to the move. We will always miss Television Center, our original home… a 100 year old studio lot that was full of character and history. But change is the way of things, and this one was necessary to support the needs of our community. I think it turned out pretty cool.