Yale School of Architecture
Fall 2020 Advanced Studio
Critics Billie Tsien + Tod Williams with Andrew Benner

A preservation project for Lerma’s Nite Club, a historic Tejano music venue in San Antonio’s Westside neighborhood. The project strives to strengthen an arts network within the neighborhood, encouraging community building by making a home for numerous existing programs.

Standardized metal warehouse structures are used to support the existing masonry facades, allowing for open interiors which can be filled and adapted as needed.

Opened in 1951, Lerma’s was a famous music club and longstanding venue for Conjunto music, a Tejano style known for its use of the accordion and lively dance style. The club was closed after its circa 1948 building was deemed dangerous by the City of San Antonio and threatened with demolition. It took continued advocacy from community groups like the Esperanza Center to save the building and initiate its ongoing restoration. The site is located in the Westside, a historic Tejano neighborhood in San Antonio. Much of its surroundings are single level homes on small lots, with new big box stores along the nearby arterial.

A historically marginalized community, the Tejano residents of the Westside face constant battles of gentrification and the destruction of historically significant buildings and cultural venues. These efforts have spawned many community initiatives to preserve their cultural heritage including a women’s ceramic arts collective and accordion lessons for community youth. Many of these programs lack a home - the accordion lessons occur in a local church’s extra space - but continue to remain vital to the neighborhood.

San Antonio already has in place a system of “VIVA Culture Buses” which connect cultural sites across the city including arts spaces and the five historic missions designated as UNESCO world heritage sites. Similarly, the Westside neighborhood already has many dispersed cultural centers and community organizations including a mural program and the Guadalupe Theater which hosts the annual Conjunto Festival. The project proposes to make Lerma’s a new link in the network, connecting the disparate programs and centers through an extension of a current VIVA bus line and a riverside walking path.

The proposal focuses on a light touch to the site, dispersing the program across four smaller buildings, limiting the amount of conditioned space needed for circulation. Two buildings occupy the existing footprint of the Lerma’s building, while one occupies an adjacent historic building and one sits within a new construction. The proposal highlights the facades of the existing buildings and allows them to open their facades for cross-ventilation in the style of historic Texas dance halls.

The buildings are designed as two systems: a “heavy” system of the existing masonry facades and new concrete facade, and a “light” system utilizing modular metal warehouse tectonics as the conditioned space. The warehouse building system acts to support the existing structurally degraded masonry walls while floor space which is completely free of additional supports. This traditionally humble and inexpensive building system is reimagined, allowing occupants to build and reconfigure their spaces as needed.