Robert Frost Auditorium Wins Rehabilitation Award

MCH is thrilled that our Robert Frost Auditorium Renovation with Hodgetts + Fung (now Mithun | Hodgetts + Fung) was recognized with the 2020 California Preservation Foundation Design Award for Rehabilitation!

From the California Preservation Foundation website: "The California Preservation Awards are a statewide hallmark, showcasing the best in historic preservation. The awards ceremony includes the presentation of the Preservation Design Awards and the President’s Awards, bringing together hundreds of people each year to share and celebrate excellence in preservation."

The historic 1,200-seat Robert Frost Auditorium complex houses a re-designed classroom, black box theatre, scene shop, and dressing rooms.

The visually striking 4” thick, 210’ span of concrete comprising the folded-plate roof survived the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, and remains an important structural component of the auditorium which is viewed as a prime example of mid-century modern design. Futuristic for its time, it has been featured in the films Gattaca and Woody Allen’s Sleeper. Culver City Mayor Thomas Small called the Frost, “daring, modern, historic and innovative, all at the same time. The Robert Frost auditorium is the quintessence of Culver City, a jewel in the crown of our architectural heritage.”

The renovation brought the space into the 21st Century with air conditioning (via a highly novel means of distribution that simultaneously quieted the system and provided sound absorption), as well as much-improved theatrical lighting and audio, enabled by mitigation of its seriously excessive reverberation.

The Design Award for Rehabilitation will be presented on Wednesday, October 22, 2020 at an online awards ceremony. Tickets are available here.