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304 The Los Angeles Woman's Building [[blank image]] [[caption]] FIGURE 15.2 Sheila de Bretteville (right) works on drywalling at the Los Angeles Woman's Building. (Maria Karras) [[/caption]] to limit the use of space to one group; for example, the psychologists and lawyers sublet their offices for night classes. Those businesses that remained with the building throughout the transition period were extraordinarily patient, but they now needed to move in and start earning money. The revenue-producing spaces - the offices and store, as well as the performance space - had to be readied immediately. Needs for privacy and security had been aroused by fears of the new neighborhood and lack of experience with an open-plan design or the process of defining one's space according to personal values and needs. So spaces defined in response to individual needs were more closed off from the public areas than they might have been had there been more time for interaction, discussion, and experience with open spaces in the new setting. However, to accomplish our goals the design emphasized open forms and generous circulation spaces as the settings for conversation, protest, and celebration. Again, there was a utopian model: spaces were provided in which to meander and to encourage personal, professional, and cultural interaction Sheila Levrant de Bretteville 305 within which the attraction of new work and people might be encouraged. The area along the periphery was to be an indoor street, bringing the public space inside and diminishing, perhaps, the separation between "inside" and "outside" that tradition and the building's formidable facade set up. Initial demands by individuals for "my" window, rather than any ideas about general office landscaping, provided the need for a solution that would make natural light part of the shared public environment. All new walls facing the windowed exterior walls were kept to eight-foot high partitions. Efforts were made to encourage windows in some of these walls to reinforce the street associations and to make it even more possible to know what was going on inside. It was hoped that keeping the density at the center of the building would facilitate perception of the larger physical unit and encourage exploration of its parts. The first floor was the most defined by the specific needs of the tenants and by code requirements. The desire for openness and visibility was balanced by the need to provide security for tenants on the street level. The indoor street was created outside the more specific spaces within the eight-foot high partitions facing the exterior windowed walls. Originally we had hoped to enclose the bookstore with only a protective sliding grate that would be pulled back during business hours, but the bookstore seemed too vulnerable, and a solid wall was to built instead. The space adjacent to the bookstore was rented for gallery space. It has sliding glass doors that make the exhibited work visible even when the gallery is closed. On the second floor a full-height wall wraps around to define a gallery that includes a more private and protected internal space at the central core and a wide gallery hall that connects the two stairways. This gallery area is an enlargement of the already generous circulation spaces that have been designated gallery space, so that art work can be experienced on the way to and from anywhere else on the floor. Along the backbone wall facing the windowed exterior walls we constructed two small spaces (for 50 to 100 people) for classes and meetings, thinking of them as the first of a series of spaces to be built on this "quiet" floor. It now seems unlikely that we will build
