Vistamar is a private high school with approximately 275 students occupying a 75,000sf industrial tilt-up concrete warehouse building in El Segundo. Recognizing the importance of its new cafeteria as an integral part of the school’s mission, ODAA sought to anchor this much needed and previously missing amenity within a sequence of common spaces at the school.

Initial Masterplanning studies explored opportunities for situating this scope to help guide future campus improvements, while the new “Viking Commons,” with fully stocked commercial kitchen, embraces students and visitors at a newly reconfigured entry that takes advantage of the building’s soaring ceilings to provide a new light-filled gathering space with connections to the outdoors.