Orange Coast College Business Education Building

Orange Coast College Business Education Building

Neutra and Alexander designed three buildings clad in brick and stucco which contained classrooms and laboratories for secretarial, accounting and office services. Here there are three different strategies for privacy or sun protection. Wood louvers afford privacy to a garden court for sitting and reading and anchors the center of the T-shaped compound. On the southwest, short brick walls angled for sun control support an open corridor roofed with translucent plastic. In another area, an over-hang clad in varnished tongue-and-groove wood runs into the open hallway of an adjacent building whose own ceiling height is higher and whose tongue-and-grooved surface is perpendicular to the penetrating overhang. The move, reminiscent of the facade treatment of the Scholtz Advertising Building, creates strongly interlocking spaces. It also affords a sense of psychological compression followed by expansion in the manner of Neutra’s one-time employer, Frank Lloyd Wright.