Glorya Kaufman Performing Arts Center at Vista Del Mar Child & Family Services

At the heart of the Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services campus in Los Angeles, the Glorya Kaufman Performing Arts Center by AUX Architecture supports equity and empowerment for autistic youths and their families. The 10,550-square-foot cultural and civic building houses an innovative therapeutic performing arts program—dance, music, and theatrical production—within spaces tuned for flexible learning and sound sensitivity.

AUX Architecture renovated and expanded a midcentury Jewish temple, preserving much of the wood structural diaphragm and concrete foundations to reduce on-site carbon and honor the building’s heritage rather than defaulting to demolition. The original sanctuary became a 300-seat theater with acoustically treated wood beams and a wood sprung dance floor adaptable to different performance surfaces. Stained glass was saved and remade as light boxes for the lobby and for High Holiday services.

Rooms serve multiple roles across a day: morning classroom, afternoon rehearsal, evening green room. A light-toned palette and acoustic systems address comfort for autistic students. Outside, the building reads as a composed set of rectangular masses; inside, warmer performance volumes open under a semi-translucent façade. Polycarbonate curtain walls made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic bring daylight while protecting privacy, and glow outward during evening performances. Column rhythms behind the façade cast shifting light and shadow.

Plan geometry at the entry hall, primary stair, and box office lobby draws on compression and expansion—gestures AUX Architecture links to Martha Graham’s Lamentation as a metaphor for daily challenges many autistic people navigate. The project reports diverting roughly 100 metric tons of waste from landfills and about 35% lower embodied carbon than new construction. Completed 2021; engineering by Nous Engineering and South Coast Engineering; construction by Shawmut Design and Construction.