Archinect - News

Ray Kappe's Rustic Canyon marvel lists for $4.99 million in Santa Monica

2024-08-26T16:40:00-04:00

A significant Ray Kappe design, the 1984 Borghei-Cookston Residence in Rustic Canyon, is available for purchase after listing for $4.99 million recently in Santa Monica, California. The 3-bed, 4-bath home is 3,574 square feet and offers a dramatic vaulted glass half-domed facade with concrete masonry massing and steel featuring prominently throughout an atypical (for Kappe’s palette) and vertically-oriented design beset by several outdoor balconies.

Its listing follows that of the SCI-Arc cofounder's 1991 Keeler House in nearby Pacific Palisades for $12 million. Another late Kappe, his final residential design in Los Angeles, went on the market last November for $4.2 million. Kappe died in 2019 with a portfolio of around 100 private home designs. Our 2016 Archinect One-to-One interview with the late architect is available here.

Image courtesy Christie's International Real Estate SoCal

Image courtesy Christie's International Re...

Five modern Santa Monica projects by KoningEizenberg: Your Next Employer?

2024-02-20T11:17:00-05:00

Following last week’s visit to New York City-based Murdock Solon Architects, we are moving our Meet Your Next Employer series to Santa Monica this week to explore the work of KoningEizenberg.

The firm describes its design process as “collaborative and structured to help individuals, organizations, and cities realize their goals,” with an underlying interest in “inclusive and sustainable neighborhoods and rethinking housing, community, and educational settings.” The firm’s resulting portfolio, which spans residential, educational, cultural, and commercial schemes, has received over 200 awards for design, sustainability, and historic preservation.

Over on Archinect Jobs, the firm is currently hiring for a Communications Coordinator to join their Santa Monica studio. For candidates interested in applying for a position, or anybody interested in learning about the firm’s output, we have rounded up five contemporary projects in Santa Monica by KoningEizenberg that exemplify the studio’s ...

KoningEizenberg shares photos of 249-unit The Park housing project in Santa Monica

2024-02-14T15:32:00-05:00

KoningEizenberg has shared images of a new multifamily project at 500 Broadway in Santa Monica called The Park following its completion in April of 2022.

The development was realized at 299,000 square feet and includes a total of 249 market-rate units.

Photo: Eric Staudenmaier

KoningEizenberg says its design broke with several norms endemic to the local typology by creating a series of open public spaces at the street level that work to activate a connection to public transit using cross-grained massing.

Photo: Eric Staudenmaier

A one-acre rooftop garden completes the program with additional space for tenants while reducing urban heat island effects on the development. Retail spaces are included at the street level as well.

Photo: Eric Staudenmaier

Sarah Sze, an artist whose work is heavily influenced by architecture, provided a fitting final touch to the project with the addition of her sculpture Split Stone from 2019.

Photo: Eric Staudenmaier

The Park complim...

Sasaki will oversee redevelopment of Santa Monica Airport into park space for LA County

2024-01-02T17:46:00-05:00

Plans for the redevelopment of the soon-to-close Santa Monica Airport have become clearer after the City Council approved an agreement with Sasaki Associates in December that would deliver a “Great Park” concept to the 227-acre site after 2028.

The new *Airport Conversion Planning Project agreement calls for a five-phase public consultation and research effort to be conducted by the firm before the end of 2025. A framework will come first in Phase One and precedes a draft of the project’s guiding principles in Phase Two, with the eventual naming of a study-informed ‘preferred scenario’ and alternative suggestions being produced by the end of Phase Three.

Phases Four and Five will round out the plan with a proposed implementation strategy for the alternative and eventual publication of a ‘Preferred Scenario Vision Book’ that coalesces the previous four phases into one written framework. Considerations for the immediate on-site activations after ‘Day One’ (e.g. January 1, 2029) are al...

A new LA Times map shows 6,000 structures in need of seismic retrofit across Los Angeles

2023-12-18T12:17:00-05:00

The LA Times recently debuted a useful map of seismic retrofit projects in major sections of the city months after official updates to the building code were enacted to address risks posed to soft-story and non-ductile concrete structures before 2033.

The map was made by surveying available records from Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Pasadena. More than 6,000 of the 16,000 buildings in the dataset are categorized as still requiring retrofits, including many homes and offices built before 1996.

Clusters of buildings in Pasadena’s Old Town and near the California Institute of Technology, most sections of Downtown LA and its nearby constituents (Koreatown, Jefferson Park, and Pico-Union), and a large swath of Hollywood between Beverly Hills and La Brea Avenue contain the majority of what has yet to receive seismic retrofits. The year ahead should see a decisive turnaround, as 60% of the yet-to-be-retrofitted soft-story buildings in the city are mandated to be completed ...

Frank Gehry's Ocean Avenue Project gets the final go-ahead in Santa Monica

2022-07-19T13:23:00-04:00

After nearly a decade of planning and design changes, Frank Gehry’s proposed Ocean Avenue mixed-use development has finally been given the go-ahead by the Santa Monica City Council.

Gehry Partners says it will be characterized by a “full-service hotel, world-class exhibitions and programs in a new space for cultural institutions, affordable and market rate housing, and a variety of publicly accessible spaces including a new pedestrian mall,” and come along with a LEED Silver certification. The estimated cost of the project is around $243 million, and the firm says it will include a cultural program and employment package that will deliver an estimated $53.3 million in economic benefits to the Westside community.

Image courtesy Gehry Partners LLP

“The Frank Gehry Project is unique, brings new amenities like a cultural institution to the Downtown, and will provide one-time funds to deliver City services including transportation infrastructure, parks, re...

20 featured architecture and design jobs on LA's Westside

2022-07-15T11:45:00-04:00

If you are looking for new architectural career opportunities in the greater Los Angeles area and would like to be near Southern California's magnificent beaches, check out our latest weekly picks of featured positions from Archinect Jobs. This highlight includes a selection of exciting openings in the coastal neighborhoods of Venice, Santa Monica, Hermosa Beach, and El Segundo as well as LA's bustling 405-adjacent hubs of Culver City, Inglewood, and West Los Angeles.

Need to look up specific job titles from the architectural profession? Simply consult Archinect's Guide to Job Titles series. To improve your portfolio, resume, interviewing skills, and increase your overall chances of getting that next job, follow our Archinect Tips series.

Eric Owen Moss Architects seeks a Designer and an Architect/Job Captain in Culver City
"Eric Owen Moss Architects is seeking talented architects/designers for its international architecture practice based in Culver City, CA. The position requires a...

Almost there for Frank Gehry's proposed Ocean Avenue Project in Santa Monica

2022-05-17T19:35:00-04:00

Ahead of this week’s scheduled planning commission meeting in Santa Monica, Gehry Partners has revealed updated renderings for the proposed Ocean Avenue Project that would install a new mixed-use cultural campus in the heart of Los Angeles’ beachy Westside.

The proposal calls for the creation of a new 120-room hotel, 100 deed-restricted apartment units, 36,000 square feet of retail and dining accommodation, and a 35,000-square-foot museum to be contained within an existing two-acre plot, with two additional landmarked structures being included as bookends for the cultural entity. If approved, construction is expected to take place over a period of 34 to 36 months with a total budget of around $350 million for the entire project.

Image courtesy Gehry Partners LLP.

Renderings appear to show a vibrant pedestrian scene punctuated by two undulated forms reminiscent of Gehry’s recent LUMA Arles Tower and the Building 32 design he completed for the Massachu...

Phillip K. Smith III and SOM team up to create light-up, reflective installation that mirrors its Californian landscape

2021-07-13T17:13:00-04:00

Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) and American artist Phillip K. Smith III have collaborated to create a site-specific installation that literally mirrors life.

Commissioned by art collector Dallas Price and her husband, sculptor Bob Van Breda, Santa Monica Linear is a horizontal line of reflected sky inserted into a 110-foot vertical plane of lush, green landscape on the grounds of the couple’s home. Smith enlisted the help of SOM’s structural engineers in order to craft a perfectly level, extruded form, free from internal structural elements.

The resulting sculpture is a 30-foot-long, ultra-flat aluminum beam element, featuring a mirrored glass surface that sits on a 42-degree slope. Its positioning avoided the use of trucks and cranes, so it was installed by hand. The piece appears as a rectangle from one perspective, however, it is actually triangular.

By day, Santa Monica Linear narrowly reflects the sky and surrounding greenery. At night, internal LEDs create slowly shifti...

Grimshaw unveils design for new Santa Monica College arts complex

2020-06-05T12:27:00-04:00

Grimshaw, in collaboration with Little Diversified Architectural Consulting as architect of record has unveiled the initial designs of the new 21,000-square-foot arts complex for Santa Monica College (SMC) in Southern California. The building will replace an existing car park and serve as the western "gateway" for the school.

Grimshaw worked closely with SMC arts faculty to create an open program that encourages cross-disciplinary discovery and engagement. "Working alongside the arts faculty of SMC to design a building that bolsters their visionary take on the importance of the arts in an evolving entrepreneurial landscape has been inspiring and energizing," said Andrew Byrne, a Managing Partner at the Grimshaw LA studio in a statement. "We are excited to work with such a supportive college to create this landmark building for the community."

The design is composed of three distinctive volumes that are linked by overhead exterior shaded spaces. The external circulation of the comple...

Gehry Partners-designed mixed-use complex advances in Santa Monica

2020-05-22T20:17:00-04:00

A sizable Gehry Partners-designed mixed-use complex planned for a corner site in Santa Monica, California is making its way through the city's approval process.

Urbanize.la reports that an preliminary environmental impact report for the project was recently published detailing the specifics of the project's sculptural tower and its low-slung supporting structures.

Site Plan. Image courtesy of City of Santa Monica.

Comprised of a series of Gehry's classic twisting and wind-blown forms, the complex is criss-crossed by pedestrian pathways and features a diminutive corner structure wrapped in glossy metal panels.

In all, the project is set to bring a 120-room hotel, 100 apartments, 36,000 square feet of retail spaces, and restaurant space; and a 35,000-square-foot "museum and gallery campus" to the site, Urbanize reports. Additionally, two landmarked structures that currently occupy the site will be relocated to make room for the project.

The project is one of several slated for the ...

10 residential projects in Los Angeles by LA architects we liked this month

2020-01-27T19:53:00-05:00

As part of Archinect's month-long Spotlight on Los Angeles, we have selected ten of our favorite residential projects across various cities and suburbs in Los Angeles County designed by practices with offices in LA.

While the region is bustling with stunning homes and raw design talent alike (too many to be featured here), we have focused our gaze on outstanding projects uploaded to LA-based Firm profiles here on Archinect.

Looking for architectural jobs in the region? Check out these firms that are currently hiring in the city and catch up also with our latest curated job picks specifically for Los Angeles.

If you missed last month's roundup of our favorite architectural projects in Austin by Austin architects, click here to take a peek.

↑ Morgan Phoa Library and Residence in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, CA by SPF:architects

↑ Mariposa1038 in Koreatown, Los Angeles, CA by Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects; Photo: Paul Vu

↑ Wonderland Houses in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, CA by MUTUO...

Environmental impact evaluation begins for Frank Gehry's Ocean Avenue Project

2019-01-02T20:20:00-05:00

The City of Santa Monica issued a notice of preparation for an environmental impact report for the Ocean Avenue Project...The project, as currently imagined, calls for the construction of mid-rise and low-rise structures, as well as the preservation of two landmarks homes fronting Ocean Avenue.

The City of Santa Monica issued a notice on December 21 to prepare an Environmental Impact Report for Frank Gehry's proposed Ocean Avenue Project. The mixed-use development includes retail/restaurant space, a public observation deck, cultural uses, that hotel tower (which had its height reduced to 12 stories), and more. The report will address multiple areas of potential environmental effects like water quality, land use and planning, noise, cultural resources and historic structures, and aesthetics and shade/shadow effects. The report is one significant step forward for the project, but a timeline is yet to be announced.

Frank Gehry presents reworked and shortened Santa Monica hotel tower

2018-01-05T14:05:00-05:00

A developer looking to erect a hotel tower designed by Frank Gehry on Santa Monica’s iconic Ocean Avenue has reworked its plans and released a new rendering of the project. Originally proposed five years ago as 22 stories, the hotel has been reduced to 12 stories—or 130 feet—to comply with the city’s new development plan for downtown. It’s just one part of a larger project that would also include a museum, shops, ground-floor open space, and 79 apartments.

The newly released rendering shows the Gehry-designed hotel tower as a considerably shortened and reworked version of what was originally proposed in March of 2013 — before the city's new height rules and design guidelines for downtown Santa Monica were implemented. For comparison, check out the rendering of the original proposal below.

The original 22-story Ocean Avenue Project proposal from 2013.

"The design team has received significant input from the community outreach process, the planning department, and the Architectural Review Board," it reads on the project's website.

Public viewing platform. Image: Gehry Partners.

"The extensive outreach process used in developing the approved DCP informed the revised project, resulting in a lower maximum height appropriate to the Downtown context. A slender tower is oriented in an east-west direction, maximizing views to the oceanfront from areas to the east."

Image: Gehry Partners.

"The building street fronts are modulated to enhance activi...

Want to live in Thom Mayne's iconic Sixth Street House?

2017-05-10T19:38:00-04:00

Then we have good news for you, that is, if you have $7,600 a month to spare on rent. The LA-based architect's Santa Monica home has been put up for lease following his recent re-location to Cheviot Hills. Two years ago, Thom Mayne and his wife, Blythe Mayne, bought beloved science-fiction author Ray Brabury's old home and have since, spent the past two years rebuilding on the site. Now that they have made the move, their old residence is up for grabs.

Some might recognize the home from its prominent role in Michael Mann's 1995 crime movie, Heat, in which Al Pacino famously rants about the "dead-tech post-modernistic bullshit house." Quick aside: the restaurant Kate Mantilini, also designed by his firm Morphosis, makes an appearance in the film as well.

Beyond its legacy in Hollywood, the home has received plenty of acclaim in the world of architecture. It was the recipient of the 1987 AIA Los Angeles Honor Award and the architectural drawings of the home have been displayed at MOMA.

Y...

Swiping right (or left!) on the architectural future of the city of Santa Monica

2017-01-24T19:54:00-05:00

Combining the swiftness of contemporary dating with the decades-long process of urban planning, the city of Santa Monica has introduced "CitySwipe," an app that allows you to comment on everything from transportation to building design to the availability of fine dining in Santa Monica's downtown.

You don't even have to live in Santa Monica to weigh-in (there's a swipe for that). As civic data gathering goes, it is definitely more fun than the census, and more pictorially honest than most hook-up apps.

Santa Monica's 'impossibly green' building dreams: the challenging path to Living Building certification

2016-11-30T14:57:00-05:00

On a small and skinny lot wedged behind its historic city hall, Santa Monica is trying to accomplish something that has never been done before in California. By 2020, the city hopes to construct a 50,000-square-foot city services building that will meet the requirements of the International Living Future Institute’s “Living Building Challenge” — the most stringent environmental building standard in the world.

"Should the city succeed it will prove that net-zero water is possible in our arid climate, even in a drought — and that if we’re serious about staving off the effects of drought and climate change, we should settle for no less. It will also familiarize code officials with new innovations, making it easier for developers to build sustainably."

With opening of Expo Line to Santa Monica, L.A.'s dream of a "subway to the sea" finally comes true (again)

2016-05-20T20:32:00-04:00

The $1.5-billion second leg of the Expo Line, which opened Friday from Culver City to Santa Monica, adds seven light-rail stations and more than six miles of track to the growing Los Angeles County transit network. [...] In the immediate context of L.A.'s attempts to turn its public-transit network from national punch line to something that increasingly resembles a mature system, 13 new Metro stations in less than three months qualifies as a pretty dramatic upgrade.

The aggressively expanding LA Metro system in recent Archinect news stories:

The unexpected survival story of the last "shotgun" house in Santa Monica

2016-01-26T14:42:00-05:00

"Small houses can tell big stories," read the apt white words on the pamphlet's blue cover. The shotgun house's Ocean Park neighborhood had once been full of such modest dwellings. It was a working-class place — home to carpenters and painters and people who washed other people's laundry. But that kind of history most often is erased over time, as little houses make way for bigger ones. Ordinary people often don't chronicle their lives — and when they leave, their stories do too.

Related:

Historic Santa Monica home served as a refuge for intellectuals fleeing Nazi Germany

2015-06-23T16:06:00-04:00

In the 1930s and '40s, the Mabery Road house in Santa Monica Canyon belonged to Hollywood screenwriter Salka Viertel, who made her house a home not only for her family but for hundreds of refugees, some very famous and others unknown... While anti-Fascist volunteers were spiriting people out of Europe, Viertel in Santa Monica was taking them in... She helped to rescue, among many others, the German Expressionist writer Leonhard Frank, the Dadaist poet Walter Mehring, and Alfred Döblin...

The historic home is currently on the market, with an asking price of $4.5 million. It was also the childhood home of noted author Peter Viertel.

Christoper Hawthorne on the recovery of public space in Los Angeles

2015-03-26T21:12:00-04:00

"The public sector stopped making public space a long time ago," Los Angeles architect Jon Jerde told Wired magazine rather matter-of-factly in 1999. [...] A little more than two decades later, there is something quaintly fatalistic about Jerde's attitude toward the frail state of public space. In Los Angeles, at least, it has returned pretty dramatically to health.

KCRW radio station breaks ground on new Media Center in Santa Monica

2014-06-12T17:33:00-04:00

KCRW, the NPR-affiliated public radio darling of Southern California, broke ground yesterday on its new 35,000 square-foot Media Center, located on Santa Monica College's Academy of Entertainment & Technology campus. For the past thirty years, KCRW was run out of a basement underneath the campus, while producing top-notch music and journalism programming that balances local flavor with international news. Now they'll have much more room to breathe, with spaces devoted to community socializing and performance alongside expanded operations.

Home to such popular podcasts as "DnA: Design and Architecture" and news digest "To the Point", KCRW also produces content outside of the studio, by hosting events around Los Angeles. With the Media Center, the station will have a homespace for its own events, to concretize its role in the local culture.

Designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects, the Media Center also meets LEED Silver Certification standards, and is slated to open by early 2016.

Oren Safdie's play "False Solution" finishes up its 3-week run this weekend in Santa Monica

2014-05-07T17:36:00-04:00

Oren Safdie, architecture-turned-playwright (and son of Moshe Safdie), has taken his play False Solution to Santa Monica, after a run in NYC last year. False Solution, Safdie's 3rd architecture-themed play, following Private Jokes, Public Places and The Bilbao Effect, follows German-Jewish architect Anton Seligman (played by Daniel J. Travanti) as he designs a new Holocaust museum in Poland. Linda Johansson (played by Amanda Saunders), a first-year architecture student, brings sexual tension as she challenges his work.

I met up with Oren at his home in Venice Beach to talk about his work as a playwright. You can listen to our conversation below...

I also had a chance to record a read-through between leads Daniel J. Travanti, whom you may recognize as the captain from Hill Street Blues, and Amanda Saunders.

Tickets to False Solution can still be purchased for the final four performances this Thursday to Sunday.

Net Neutrality lives on in Santa Monica, California

2014-04-30T18:40:00-04:00

[Santa Monica will] be able to offer its residents real net neutrality, which the [FCC] is working on rolling back for just about everyone else in the US. [...] Santa Monica has cleverly and quietly been installing its own network of city-owned fiber-optic cables for years, and they intend to keep the net neutral. [...] Santa Monica has also made about $5 million providing internet service and leasing out the cables to other providers, and their competition has driven down rates.

The Federal Communications Commission recently proposed that internet service providers (like Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable) should be able to charge companies extra for faster service -- so for example, Netflix could pay AT&T more to ensure faster download speeds for its viewers. This would violate net neutrality, the concept that aims to ensure that every companies' data on the internet is treated (and delivered) equally. Under the FCC's proposal, larger companies would be able to make their content more accessible to users, handicapping smaller companies from the get-go.

But what if your internet service provider wasn't AT&T or Verizon, but your own city? Should city governments hold the reins of internet service, and ultimately net neutrality? It's not only a question of download speeds for the user, but of how local governments could use internet traffic data to change their city. If the internet were treated like a local utility, then perhaps city governments could more ...

OMA's winning Santa Monica design is rejected by city council members

2013-09-04T15:38:00-04:00

The design called for a series of rectangular buildings skewed on an axis comprised of ground-floor retail, office development and proposed residential and flex office space and the upper section would be a hotel, according to city officials. “I have to say that the Metro Pacific is a beautiful project and you look at it and it’s stunning architecturally,” Davis said. “The affordable housing is kind of an afterthought … . It’s a little unclear of how many units we are going to get.”

OMA’s Winning “The Plaza at Santa Monica” Entry

2013-07-23T21:10:00-04:00

OMA is on a winning spree on both American coasts right now: we reported last week that the team consisting of OMA, Tishman Realty and UIA Management had won the Miami Beach Convention Center Master Plan competition, and just earlier this month, OMA's New York office was also declared winner of a major competition for a mixed use development in Santa Monica, California. In both cases, OMA's submissions prevailed over entries by fellow finalists Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).

Previously: OMA Wins Miami Beach Convention Center Competition

Frank Gehry designing new tower in Santa Monica

2013-03-04T11:52:00-05:00

Frank Gehry is designing a new 22-story tower that developers want to build in downtown Santa Monica, near the intersection of Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, according to the official website for the project. The structure will feature space for a hotel and condominiums, as well as restaurant and retail space.

Santa Monica Complete Green Street Breaks Ground

2012-01-23T15:20:00-05:00

Designed by John Kaliski Architects, in conjunction with Lawrence Moss & Associates, Landscape Architects, and Kimley-Horn & Associates, Civil Engineers, the Ocean Park Boulevard Complete Green Street recently broke ground on December 12, 2011. When completed in early 2013, it will be the longest complete green street in the City of Santa Monica, and one of the longest in Southern California.

Gehry’s Santa Monica Residence Wins AIA Twenty-Five Year Award

2012-01-11T17:51:00-05:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected the Gehry Residence in Santa Monica, California for the 2012 AIA Twenty-five Year Award. [...] A seemingly ad hoc collection of raw, workmanlike materials wrapped around an unassuming two-story clapboard bungalow, Frank Gehry’s, FAIA, home for his wife, Berta, and two sons found a literal, but unexpected, answer to the question of neighborhood context, and used it to forever re-shape the formal and material boundaries of architecture.

The covert birth of Apple's next Santa Monica store

2011-12-09T13:58:00-05:00

... according to a person familiar with the plans who is bound by a nondisclosure agreement, Apple has already begun work on such a store in Santa Monica. Like the Peter Bohlin-designed Apple Store on New York's Upper West Side, it will have a tall, striking glass storefront...

The Santa Monica store episode also illustrates Apple's unusually covert way of doing business. Interviews with almost two dozen people familiar with Apple Store negotiations say the Cupertino, California, company sometimes employs uncommon legal tactics, refuses to name itself in public documents and hearings, and has sworn city government officials to secrecy.