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Oliver Wainwright reviews Eric Owen Moss' "menacing" (W)RAPPER office tower

2023-03-20T14:28:00-04:00

The result is a menacing thing, cranking up Moss’s cyberpunk tendencies to new high-octane levels. If ever Hollywood needs a villainous headquarters for a dystopian petrol-guzzling empire, this will be first in line – with a carbon footprint to match.

The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright spies the limits of LA-brand deconstructivism on a visit to Eric Owen Moss’ (W)RAPPER project in Culver City's Hayden Tract, an “eccentric” assembly of low-rise office buildings the critic says he has helped turn into a warped “exhibition of architectural experimentation.”

Image courtesy Google Street View (February 2023)

Moss brags about the rubberband-like steel exoskeleton that wraps the glass in the city’s second-tallest building enabling a column-free interior while enhancing the imposed verticality and is supposedly inspired by William Butler Yeats and Gustave Courbet, among many other crisscrossing intellectual references. Wainwright, unfazed, drops the dime on its poor sustainability bonafide (to which Moss returns “Is that the only measure of architecture now?”) before critiquing the greatly obstructed views and questioning the promise of so-called “creative office” designs.

Related on Archinect: Eric Owen Moss-designed (W)RAPPER tower has t...

Eric Owen Moss-designed (W)RAPPER tower has topped out

2021-10-12T17:07:00-04:00

New images released by Urbanize LA reveal that the Eric Owen Moss Architects-designed (W)RAPPER office tower has topped out.

The 17-story, 183,000-square-foot high-rise stands out with its free-form steel exoskeleton that wraps the structure allowing for column-free interiors. The freshly topped-out building in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, which was originally approved in 1999, stands 230 feet tall. It is reportedly set to be completed in June 2022.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Urbanize LA (@urbanizela)

Eric Owen Moss-designed (W)RAPPER tower: construction update

2020-06-18T16:35:00-04:00

Six months since we last checked in, the curving steel skeleton of the Eric Owen Moss-designed Wrapper office tower is starting to take shape next to Metro's La Cienega/Jefferson Station in Baldwin Hills.

Designed by Eric Owen Moss Architects, the 17-story (W)RAPPER office tower in Los Angeles generated a stir of reactions among Archinect readers when construction started going vertical in December 2019.

The free-form steel exoskeleton, which appears to be wrapping the structure and enables column-free interiors, is currently going up at the site, according to new construction photos published by Urbanize LA.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Urbanize.LA (@urbanize.la) on Jun 18, 2020 at 9:21am PDT

Eric Owen Moss-designed (W)RAPPER: tower construction goes vertical

2019-12-17T13:45:00-05:00

A year after breaking ground at 5790 W. Jefferson Boulevard, the arrival of a tower crane signals that construction is ramping up at the Eric Owen Moss-designed Wrapper development. The project, located just west of Metro's La Cienega/Jefferson Station, is being developed by Samitaur Constructs - the local real estate investment firm behind a slew of abstract office complexes in Culver City's Hayden Tract.

The exoskeleton wrapping the 17-story tower like giant rubber bands enables the interior spaces to be column-free, some even with double-height ceilings, reports Urbanize LA.

Image: Eric Owen Moss/Zimmerman Visual, via wrappertower.com

Expected to be a key anchor building near LA's La Cienega/Jefferson Metro Station, the 180,548-square-foot (W)RAPPER tower is only a stone's throw away from other Eric Owen Moss-designed developments, like Hayden Tract, Pterodactyl Office, Gateway/Samitaur Tower, and the award-winning restaurant Vespertine in nearby Culver City.