CLA Building


The Classroom, Laboratory & Administration Building, commonly known simply as the CLA Building, is a building on the campus of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Designed by Albuquerque, New Mexico-based architect Antoine Predock in the Futurist style and completed in 1993, it has come to be the defining image of the university. As of 2015, the building has been scheduled for demolition, but has yet to be demolished as of May 2020.
Its pointed, triangular and open top makes it the most distinct tower on the university campus. According to Predock, "inevitably, human settlement alters the landscape. Successive habitation has altered the Pomona Valley from the original dry swept earth of Rancho San Jose. Now the verdant Arabian horse ranch of W.K. Kellogg coexists with the technological, superscale freeway interchange." Due to Cal Poly Pomona's proximity to the Los Angeles district of Hollywood, the building has been displayed in films such as Gattaca and Impostor, as well as several TV commercials for products such as cars and cell phones.
The CLA building sits directly above the San Jose Hills fault and has the second-highest seismic "risk score" of 72.94, in the California State University system, after a building at CSU East Bay. It suffered no structural damage as a result of the July 29, 2008 Chino Hills earthquake, a magnitude 5.4. It has leaked water since it was completed in 1993, and connections and beams at the building do not meet California earthquake safety standards. It needs so much work that university officials began contemplating tearing it down. The CSU Board of Trustees, at its September 21, 2010 meeting, approved a proposal to replace the CLA with a new facility.