Eric Owen Moss: The New City: I'll See It When I Believe It

Š 2016 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved

Š 2016 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved

BEVERLY HILLS 101

CENTRAL LA

DOWNTOWN SANTA MONICA

10

405

CULVER CITY 110

VENICE

PACIFIC OCEAN

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BUILT PROJECTS

EXISTING BUILDINGS

PROPOSED PROJECTS

SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENT

PROJECT SITES

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HIG

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EXPOSITION

30 10 LIGHT RAIL

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LINE

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W JEFFERSON

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EASTHAM

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LA CIENEGA BLVD

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37 JEFFERSO

NATIONAL

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HIGUERA

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JEFFERS

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LINDBLADE TOWER PARAMOUNT LAUNDRY 8522 NATIONAL GARY GROUP SAMITAUR S.P.A.R. CITY S.P.A.R. CITY BRIDGE THE BOX

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METAFOR IRS INCE THEATER STEALTH 3535 HAYDEN BEEHIVE 21 THEATERS UMBRELLA

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TRIVIDA (W)RAPPER THE BRIDGE SLASH BACKSLASH PTERODACTYL THE SPA WEDGEWOOD HOLLY PARKING

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3505 HAYDEN SUPPER CLUB INCE CONNECTOR PINEAPPLE 3555 HAYDEN SAMITAUR TOWER WAFFLE WARNER PARKING & RETAIL

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CACTUS TOWER JEFFERSON SPIRAL LA CIENEGA PARKING CYCLO TOWER 5860 JEFFERSON SLICE SPRAYLAT

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MODERN 330

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PTO

PTERODACTYL

1998-2014 WEDGEWOOD HOLLY

The Pterodactyl includes an office building and parking garage on a vacant site opposite the Stealth in a complex of new and remodeled buildings in Culver City. In terms of square footage, the garage is large program component – 800 cars – and the offices small – 20,000 square feet. But, by intention, the perceived inter-relationship of the two uses from the west – the primary elevation facing the parking lot – emphasizes the office building presence, and minimizes the parking lot visibility. ...the world we know topped with a world we would like to know. PTO 1 A. Moody, Specifier Magazine

The parking structure is four stories, an open steel frame with blownon fire proofing covering the structural steel. The entry elevation expresses the automobile movement system by stacking both entry and exit ramps on the west garage face. Automobile entry is at the visual center of that elevation, between the two ramps.

The two story office space begins on the fourth floor of the garage.

The first office floor shares the 4th floor parking deck. The center portion of the office building is a three-level structure space that steps down across the second and third parking floors, attached to the front façade of the parking structure, and suspended over the auto entry/exit area above the first floor. ...a simple, repetitive grid, with regular bays analogous to those of the surrounding warehouses, suddenly agitated by the geometric and structural complexity of the nine suspended rectangular boxes... PTO 2 P. Giaconia, Eric Owen Moss: The Uncertainty of Doing

The office building is formed by the intersection of nine elevated rectangular boxes, lifted one level above the garage roof, stacked either on top of or adjacent to each other. The boxes are supported on the steel column grid extended from the parking structure two levels above the 4th floor deck. An interior, second floor bridge, running north-south, connects the boxes. Each box is glazed on the north, with glazing running perpendicular to the entry elevation.

© 2016 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved

NATIONAL

BLVD

BLVD

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HAY

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JEFFERSON

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STELLAR

EASTHAM

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NATIONAL

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HIGUERA A ST

3540B Hayden Avenue

...objective and subjective, related to the culture of Los Angeles and yet outside the noise of that culture, dialectical in every way – personal and generic, open and closed, coherent and irrational, light and dark, outside and inside, stable and neurotic... PTO 3 R. Meier, Eric Owen Moss: Buildings and Projects 3

The four-level parking structure is straightforward and inexpensive construction – steel frame, metal decks, regular bays, and ingress/ egress ramps at opposite ends of the public, west face of the project.

The required fireproofing of the structural steel was treated as a finish material, and precisely applied to the steel frame but not to the metal deck spanning between the beams.

The technical pieces that make each “box” are, as a theoretical proposition, straightforward elements that are used in many buildings with predictable results.

But here we’re using something that is understood as a form in a predictable way and producing a very different anomalous spatial result while producing an operationally simple and intelligible interior. So it’s simple, and then it isn’t, and then it is. PTO 4 E. Moss in Conversation with A. Betsky, Architect Magazine

Wedgewood Holly

...structures in which the balance between finished and unfinished is ambiguous and at the same time a reflection of the continuous dynamism and mutability to which contemporary architecture is subject. PTO 5 L. Molinari, Lotus

The 800 car structure is the conceptual podium for the rooftop office building. Buildings in the area are three floors or less, so the office building on the roof affords spectacular vistas of the entire city from downtown to the Santa Monica Mountains to the Westside of Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean.

6 Initial Boxes

Boxes Trimmed

3 Intermediate Boxes

Space Extended Below

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333

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336

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MODERN 318

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WRP

(W)RAPPER

1997-2015 JEFFERSON BLVD.

The original Jefferson Towers project – two 235 foot high-rise towers and parking – was approved by the Los Angeles City Planning Commission and the Los Angeles City Council in 1999. At the time of its original approval the only high rise proposal in the South Los Angeles area, the location for two urban riots in the last fifty years.

Today the project continues to be the only tower proposal in that section of the city. The project carries with it the aspiration for a renewal of an area which has had more than its share of poverty, and the accompanying social pathologies, in comparison with other more affluent parts of Los Angeles. The only other significant new development project in that neighborhood was the Samitaur airrights project, completed in 1996 within the original 45 foot height limit, and considered to be the first phase of the re-development of the tower site. The towers are the second phase of that redevelopment.

The conceptual strategy for the project was a structural strategy, and that strategy remains in the most recent version. A continuous system of curvilinear ribbons, neither beams, nor columns, wraps the two contiguous boxes – T shaped in plan – allowing a completely open, column-free interior.

It is not an allegiance, it is not a rule system, it is not a method yet but it is an investigation... WRP 1 E. Moss, Conversation with J. Kipnis at Sci-Arc

The towers project was dormant for several years, then resurrected in 2006 as a single tower with parking both above and below grade.

After a complex series of Los Angeles City reviews the project was re-approved and re-designed. A primary impetus for the return of the project was the advent of a surface, passenger rail system, running from downtown to the University of Southern California, south of downtown, then west along Jefferson Boulevard to a stop at Jefferson and La Cienega. That intersection is a primary crossing of major north-south [La Cienega] and east-west [the 10 freeway] traffic axes in Los Angeles. The project site is a block north-west of the train stop, and sits adjacent to the train route as the train turns north to a second stop, several blocks west of the site. The train makes the tower site readily accessible by surface rail, and that development convinced the owners of the economic viability of the tower building.

© 2016 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved

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5800 Jefferson Boulevard

The project, because of its height and the relatively low buildings that surround the site, will have enormous prominence both as an object on an otherwise 45 foot high skyline, and as an opportunity to provide long distance views in every direction for the office building’s tenants. Both the opportunity to build a free-standing tower with no intervening obstacles to views of the project, and vistas from inside were also persuasive arguments for the revival and re-design of the building.

What really made... (the project) happen is that the train is going through there. WRP 2 E. Moss, Conversation with J. Kipnis at Sci-Arc

Both the new tower and the new passenger railway and train stop are likely to become prominent symbols of the rebirth of South Central Los Angeles.

The project is T shaped in plan, with the top of the T adjoining the railway right-of-way to the west of the tracks. The current planning concept includes the same square footage area as in the original, two tower scheme, but in the current plan, the entire square footage program -- 210,000 square feet -- is placed within a single tower.

The intersection of Jefferson and National is re-designed both to facilitate the location of the train tracks, the adjoining streets, and to organization of automobile entry of from the signaled intersection.

Behind the project to the east is a parking structure with three levels below grade and two levels above. The garage will be partially covered with a park composed of triangulated, paved and sloping grass plains that can be used for informal gatherings and outdoor exhibits and presentations, and a south facing horizontal surface of photo-voltaic panels. Pedestrians leaving the train station to the east, walk along the east elevation of the garage and the tower, then proceed up a stair or elevator, over a bridge, to the second floor tower elevator lobby.

As soon as I insist that this is absolutely the way, I’m prepared to show myself another vantage point. Multiple vantage points. WRP 3

Full proposed development at Jefferson/La Cienega

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E. Moss, Eric Owen Moss: Buildings and Projects 2

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