Archinect - News

Plans scrapped for $1 billion Hollywood Center towers development

2024-05-02T17:31:00-04:00

New York-based developer Millennium Partners has withdrawn their proposal for the $1 billion Handel Architects-designed Hollywood Center in Los Angeles. The two-tower scheme that was planned for parking lots adjacent to Welton Becket’s iconic Capitol Records building would have been the tallest in Hollywood, standing at 46 and 36 stories each and containing a total of 1,005 residences, but will now be scrapped in favor of a potential new hotel development as per Urbanize LA’s reporting this morning.

The decade-old scheme had been progressing despite a negative Environmental Impact Report and the late discovery of concerning fault lines beneath the property. Millennium Partners said: "While we have made the decision for now not to move ahead with our vision to build housing on the surrounding surface parking lots, we remain committed to working to make the Hollywood community a better place to live and work and to help Hollywood realize its full potential as the entertainment capital...

Foster + Partners replaces MAD on Hollywood office tower design

2024-03-20T18:59:00-04:00

Foster + Partners has been revealed as the architects of a replacement design that will take the place of the previous MAD Architects-produced The Star scheme at 6061 W Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

The newly proposed $1 billion "vertical creative office" is meant as an office for tenants in Hollywood's creative content industries.

Renderings for the replacement design showcase a high-rise structure with 360-degree views provided by its cylindrical form and punctured by a diagonal schism that contains biophilic elements and gathering spaces ribboning around the building's volume in three bands. A rooftop restaurant culminates the design at its uppermost floor.

Rendering courtesy Foster + Partners

The new proposal demarcates considerably from the original $500 million MAD design, which called for 22 stories of vertical gardens to be contained by a glass canopy. The rest of the program includes a ground-level LED video screen, an "arched paseo of restaurants," community gathering sp...

Paul Revere Williams-designed Blind Children's Center is getting remodeled for a new century of service in Los Angeles

2024-02-06T15:02:00-05:00

A renovation of the historic Paul Revere Williams-designed Blind Children’s Center (BCC) is underway in Los Angeles. The 80-year-old structure that preceded Williams’s seminal St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis and other hospital designs in Southern California by twenty years is now being remodeled and modernized to match the expanded needs of the BCC community for a new century.

Williams had been living in his now landmarked first residence in Jefferson Park at the time of his commissioning for the project. His design gave the nonprofit its first permanent home during a period of rampant discrimination, thus serving as a built testament to inclusivity.

The facility in July 2022. Image courtesy of the Blind Children's Center (BCC)

Now, with support from the Ahmanson, W. M. Keck and Rose Hills Foundations, the BCC’s b...

Tesla's diner & drive-in theater supercharger station concept gets approved for West Hollywood

2023-08-28T15:14:00-04:00

Tesla’s retro-inspired supercharging diner & drive-in movie theater concept will begin construction soon after the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety recently approved a planning permit for the company’s first Stantec-led design at 7001 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, Teslarati reports.

The previously announced plan calls for a two-story, 9,300-square-foot structure with bars and an outdoor restaurant seating area. The structure will have two "drive-in" screens, which play movies of approximately 30 minutes in length, and capacity for 29 total charging stations. Tesla says it will operate the station on a 24-hour capacity.

CEO Elon Musk earlier this month described its design as "Grease meets The Jetsons with Supercharging" before promising its realization by the end of this year. Only technical drawings from the permitting application have been made official, leading some to offer their own speculative renderings via social media. A model of the structure was ...

Aaron Neubert Architects completes Los Angeles hillside residence defined by vertical ‘T’ window

2023-08-14T11:14:00-04:00

Aaron Neubert Architects has completed the ‘t House,’ a residence for a young family located in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills, overlooking the San Fernando Valley and Griffith Park. Described by the design team as an “innovative model for Southern California hillside developments,” the residence blends an adherence to strict hillside regulations with an incorporation of the site’s natural surroundings.

Photo credit: Paul Vu / HANA

Visitors approach the main entrance through terraced gardens, leading to a glass-enclosed foyer. On the opposite side of the house, addressing a steep slope, a vertical window spans three levels aligning perfectly with Barham Boulevard while giving the scheme its 't' moniker.

Photo credit: Paul Vu / HANA

Inside, the residence contains three levels. The middle level houses the living space, including the kitchen, dining area, and office. The lower level features a guest suite and an entertainment zone ope...

$2 Billion Powerball winner splashes $25.5 million on Hollywood Hills mansion

2023-03-09T13:58:00-05:00

To say the last few months have been life-changing for Edwin Castro would be putting it mildly. In November, he bought a winning Powerball lottery ticket at a Mobil gas station in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena. Last month, he finally claimed his record-shattering prize, taking home a $997.6 million lump sum before taxes. Less than 30 days later, he’s the proud owner of one of the flashiest new mansions in the star-studded Hollywood Hills.

Castro purchased the mansion for $25.5 million, a discount from the property’s initial ask of $29.95 million. According to the Los Angeles Times, this is the most expensive sale in the Hollywood Hills this year and one of the neighborhood’s priciest ever. The home was built in 2022 by luxury development company Roman James Design.

Hollywood Hills home of Powerball Lotto winner Edwin Castro. Image screen grab via The AgencyRE.

It stands three stories tall, with more than 13,000 square feet of living space, including five bedrooms and six bathrooms. It features a range of extravagant offerings, including a game room, wine cellar, movie theater, gym, sauna, infinity pool, and more.

Video courtesy of The AgencyRE.

Wood and concrete comprise the mansion’s façade. Its interior is defined by open-concept, indoor-outdoor spaces that allow for a seamless connection between the living spaces and the exteriors. This transparency also provides panoramic views of Los Angeles.

...

'An astonishing place to explore': Oliver Wainwright previews the trippy Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood

2023-01-25T13:00:00-05:00

Welcome to Super Nintendo World, the closest thing you can get to diving head-first inside a video game and experiencing the likely effects of swallowing one of Mario’s magic mushrooms. For Universal, it represents the first expansion beyond film- and TV-themed rides, and a step up in designing a total environment – with the opening timed to capitalise on the release of an animated Super Mario Bros movie this spring.

The park expansion officially opens on February 17th. Visitors will find attractions like the overpriced Toadstool Cafe, a “sedate crawl” signature race experience (sans shortcuts), cuter small details, and Bowser’s Castle, which apparently includes a self-help library and bomb-making workshop.

Previously on Archinect: Super Nintendo World Hollywood sets an opening date for 2023

Wainwright compared the latter to Kim Jong-Il’s palatial abode, a space he documented somewhat controversially for a 2018 investigation published by Taschen. A Universal Studios executive described its design as being geared to encourage profligate repetition, not unlike a casino's. The Hollywood location follows another that opened in Osaka in 2021 and will be joined by two others in Orlando and Singapore, due to open by the end of 2025.

The plot containing Frank Gehry's 8150 Sunset mixed-user is up for grabs in Hollywood

2023-01-19T12:22:00-05:00

This month, listings appeared on multiple websites advertising the 2.5-acre property at 8150 Sunset Boulevard as being for sale. The now vacant lot, which sits at Sunset's intersection with Crescent Heights Boulevard, is the former site of the Garden of Allah, and more recently, the Lytton Savings Building.

The amended plan includes a retail center and residential tower with 38 total units of affordable housing divided into two sculptural volumes that straddle a 2.5-acre plot. Once developed, it will join Gehry’s similarly-designed Ocean Avenue Project and the 45-story The Grand LA as the latest Gehry Partners mixed-use projects to grace the Los Angeles area this decade. The assessor’s estimate for the Sunset property was $14.75 million.

Political disorder is impeding much-needed housing progress in Los Angeles

2023-01-10T12:54:00-05:00

To ease Los Angeles’ crushing housing shortage, the city needs a lot more new homes, especially affordable ones. Yet the City Council has been sitting on two community plans that would make it easier for developers to construct housing and boost the number of low-income units in downtown and Hollywood. What’s the holdup? Politics and scandal.

One of the plans, the Downtown Community Plan, which aims to add 100,000 new homes to Los Angeles’ downtown core through 2040, was put on hold after an audio recording surfaced revealing three council members making racist and offensive comments about their colleagues and constituents. Two of the council members involved, former LA mayoral candidate Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, helped shape the plan but are now unavailable to push it forward.

The Los Angeles Times highlights the problematic nature of the political structure around development, in which council members have total control over land-use decisions, which, in the case of the Downtown Community Plan has backfired. This, along with the Hollywood Community Plan, which is also experiencing a prolonged delay, is designed to make the approval process quicker for mixed-income developments.

If the City Council doesn’t act on the plans by May, the documents will expire and the approval process will restart.

...

HKS and Hood Design Studio’s CMNTY Culture development set for a 2024 groundbreaking in Hollywood

2022-12-06T13:54:00-05:00

An updated version of HKS and Hood Design Studio’s musically-inspired CMNTY Culture campus in Hollywood has been shared after the results of an initial study for the project were published by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning recently.

Urbanize LA has details on the promising development, which, when completed, will be one of the largest Black-owned enterprises in the city.

Image: HKS

Construction on the scheme, which is located on a four-parcel site at 6767 Sunset Boulevard, is now expected to begin in 2024 and wrap up by 2027. In total, the campus will include some 430,000 square feet of office space, a 50,000-square-foot production facility, a 500-seat performance venue, a 10,000-square-foot artists' hospitality area, and a six-story underground parking structure.

Image: HKS

The shared podium will be beset by landscaped terraces designed by Walter Hood's team and bookended by two offset volumes totaling 12 and 14 stories in height and wrapped in an LED screen facade.

Im...

This new LA project showcases the application of hybrid cross-laminated timber construction and adaptive reuse

2022-10-13T19:54:00-04:00

Los Angeles and Portland-based architecture firm West of West is currently working on a new creative office community in Hollywood, California. The studio's 6344 Fountain project integrates hybrid cross-laminated timber (CLT) construction within an adaptive reuse development.

According to the architects, the design is modeled after "the intimate garden bungalows of historic movie studio lots." Project renderings show a four-story, 60,000-square-foot office building that incorporates an existing 20,000-square-foot commercial structure. Aiming to break away from the "traditional monolithic office building mass," the design team proceeded with a stepped building profile.

Project rendering of 6344 Fountain, courtesy of West of West.

Project rendering, courtesy of West of West.

Located at the building's north-facing facade will be a "grand stair" that's placed where the new and existing buildings will meet. Made of Fortina, this extruded aluminum material has an imprinted texture resembl...

RIOS continues to cultivate the film studio market with a new $600 million Hollywood expansion project

2022-10-10T18:18:00-04:00

RIOS has just been announced as the architects of a new $600 million television studio project in Hollywood, California.

The studio will look to expand on its other ongoing television production projects in the delivery of its latest venture, which is set to transform the former corporate headquarters of the early TV pioneers Technicolor on 6311 W. Romaine Street into a comprehensive studio campus for developers BARDAS and Bain Capital Real Estate.

Image courtesy RIOS

The 620,000-square-foot Echelon at Television Center involves the restoration of two existing Art Deco structures and the addition of two new six-story office towers on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard on a two-block site that also includes multiple sound stages, a “basecamp,” and a new public restaurant.

Image courtesy RIOS

The rise of streaming services has meant an increase in demand for technologically-advanced studio and production spaces around the Los Angeles area. RIOS has already begun the planning process f...

Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood is taking shape

2022-10-03T15:40:00-04:00

Get ready to enter the “World of Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach” as construction crews work to bring Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood to life. Sky5 captured video of the construction progress Wednesday as crews worked on various aspects of the project, such as the Warp Pipe entrance and Bowser’s Castle.

This latest Universal Studios Hollywood expansion will be the first Super Nintendo World in the United States, following the opening of its counterpart at Universal Studios Japan in 2021. The theme park was conceived in partnership with Nintendo and Universal Creative.

As seen in KTLA’s video coverage of the construction progress, the attraction looks to be shaping up ahead of its expected opening in early 2023.

Previously on Archinect: Super Nintendo World Hollywood sets an opening date for 2023

As per an NBCUniversal press release, one of the park’s main attractions is its “Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge,” which is described as “one of the most complex rides ever built within the entertainment industry.” Through the use of augmented reality, guests will be immersed in the environment of Mario Kart, where they will race similarly to the iconic video game.

Where the sidewalk (ext)ends: Gensler reveals updated plans for Hollywood Walk of Fame pedestrian improvements

2022-08-04T19:28:00-04:00

Two years after its initial announcement, Gensler has shared updated project renderings and new site plan details for its pedestrian enhancement of LA's Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The project entails a number of hastened improvements to the road surface and overall streetscape. Construction is expected to begin next summer and take $7.2 million to complete its first phase through the end of 2024. Gensler is the prime consultant for this segment of the larger $60 million comprehensive plan authored by Los Angeles Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, while full design details are still being finalized.

Image courtesy Gensler

As reported by Time Out, the construction will affect a segment of Hollywood Boulevard between Gower Street and Orange Drive. Among the upgrades, added planters and outdoor dining areas will feature prominently alongside new shade trees, kiosks, and spaces dedicated to temporary art installations. The project will also include a bus stop consolidation and important traffic la...

Tesla is pushing to build a new drive-in diner, theatre, and supercharging station in Hollywood

2022-06-10T15:53:00-04:00

As reported by Electrek in May 2022, Tesla has moved its previously-announced plans for a supercharging station featuring a diner and drive-in movie theater from a vacant lot in the city of Santa Monica to the current location of a Shakey's Pizza franchise on 7001 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, CA.

The two-story structure will feature multiple bars and outdoor restaurant seating in addition to amphitheater-style seating overlooking its dual screens and field of 29 charging stations.

The movies are said to be approximately 30 minutes in length, roughly equal to the amount of time required by the Level 3 supercharging process, which is done with greater alacrity than the 8 to 20-hour at-home Level 1 and 2 versions. Permits are still waiting to be approved allowing the station (but not the theater) to operate 24 hours a day. Some have speculated it will carry a “retro” midcentury aesthetic reminiscent of the great Standard Oil stations documented by Ed Ruscha in the early 1960s....

A look at the process behind David Korins' dazzling set design for the 94th Academy Awards

2022-03-29T20:43:00-04:00

As the 94th Academy Awards returned to Los Angeles' famed Dolby Theatre for the first time since 2020, creative director David Korins took center stage with what is now his second design for perhaps the most important part of Hollywood's annual celebration of film culture and the cinematic arts.

Artist rendering of the concept for the Act 1 "Cascading Spiral" stage. Image courtesy David Korins Design.

From concept to implementation, the overall project took four months to complete, finally offering the awards’ 16.6 million viewers a sequel to his inclusivity-themed 2019 effort based upon subjects like the future and communities that can imbue each member with the ability to shine on their own individual stage.

Act 1: Cascading Spiral. Image courtesy David Korins Design.

Act 2: The Wave. Image courtesy David Korins Design.

Act 3: Crystals. Image courtesy David Korins Design.

Act 4: Triangle. Image courtesy David Korins Design.

The design incorporated some 90,000 individual Swarovski cry...

HKS will transform a slice of Sunset Boulevard into a hub for Hollywood creativity

2022-03-22T13:35:00-04:00

A popular corner of Hollywood may soon be getting a lot busier thanks to a proposal for a new Grammy-worthy creative campus located at the crossroads of the entertainment industry’s two most important arteries.

Tentatively named the CMNTY Culture Campus, the proposed 500,000-square-foot design from HKS for Record Plant founder Phillip Lawrence and celebrity business mogul Thomas St. John will serve as the former’s “love letter” to the city, offering itself as a nexus of differing spaces reserved for users working across every area of the industry’s creative machine.

Image: CMNTY Culture/HKS

Hood Design Studio will collaborate with HKS for the landscape design on the two-acre site located directly across from Hollywood High School at Highland Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. The development is just a few short blocks removed from Netflix’s corporate headquarters and the site of MAD’s proposed Star office tower, which will be completed in 2026.

Once approved, the Campus will become one of...

Super Nintendo World Hollywood sets an opening date for 2023

2022-03-14T11:50:00-04:00

An expansion at Universal Studios Hollywood will bring the spinning coins and floating blocks of the “Super Mario Bros.” video game to the theme park next year, marking the completion of one in just a handful of theme park expansions in the U.S. since the onset of COVID-19.

Park officials have billed the new expansion as a “visual spectacle of vibrant colors and architectural ingenuity located within a newly expanded area of the theme park, featuring a groundbreaking ride and interactive areas, to be enjoyed by the whole family."

Related on Archinect: Super Nintendo World theme park to open in Japan this summer. Image courtesy Universal Studios Japan

Universal’s last comparable expansion came in 2016 to the tune of nearly $500 million, which bought a six-acre plot in L.A. that was later developed into the commercially successful Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The added attraction, which is now set to open within an undetermined nine-month period next year, would constitute Universal's fourth such planned Super Nintendo World, joining an existing facility in Osaka, Japan, and followed closely by identical attractions in Orlando and Singapore by the year 2025.

“They are getting a jump on the market, getting people excited early,” industry consultant Den...

Los Angeles' LGBTQ community gets much-needed senior housing thanks to a new project from the Ariadne Getty Foundation and KFA

2021-10-08T18:50:00-04:00

In an effort to tackle the effects of America’s ongoing affordable housing crisis on LGBTQ seniors, KFA and Leong Leong are teaming up with the Ariadne Getty Foundation on the design of a five-story apartment complex that will help meet the needs of the greater Los Angeles community.

The development will sit adjacent to the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s newly-opened Anita May Rosenstein Campus in Hollywood and will be able to provide 98 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments to those in dire need of housing. A total of 72 of the apartments will be made available through a lottery system, while the remainder will be set aside for those experiencing chronic homelessness and require assistance through municipal or countywide grant programs.

Image © Jim Simmons/The Ariadne Getty Foundation

“The lack of affordable housing in this country is at an all-time high and presents even greater hardships for the LGBTQ community given the many biases which continue to exist. It’s an even greater probl...

MAD Architects proposes a tree-filled 'office of the future' in the heart of Hollywood

2021-09-16T15:43:00-04:00

LA's Hollywood neighborhood is undergoing a massive transformation with new developments popping up everywhere. MAD Architects just introduced another $500 million design proposal to the mix which is guaranteed to stand out from the sea of often unbearably bland new buildings.

Located at 6061 Sunset Boulevard, only a few blocks away from Netflix' new Hollywood office campus, the planned office tower, dubbed 'The Star,' intrigues with an unusual shape we would expect from the team at MAD and features landscaped gardens and terraces integrated throughout its 22 floors.

A short video rendering released this week reveals a textured glass facade and external elevator pods sliding up and down the building's spines.

Video courtesy MAD Architects

"Hollywood has been a signature center for culture and creativity for a long time," Ma Yansong, MAD's founding principal, shared. "The Star will be the new iconic landmark in Hollywood and continue to nurture the public's inspiration and creativi...

Controversial D.W. Griffith-inspired white elephants removed as part of major Hollywood & Highland makeover

2021-08-04T13:55:00-04:00

Two white elephants, a connection to the early days of filmmaking at the Hollywood & Highland Center in Los Angeles, have finally been removed by the city as part of a timely $100 million makeover that began earlier this year.

Variety is reporting that new owners of the center have decided to remove the statues this week over their explicit connections to one of the more notorious figures of Old Hollywood’s racist past.

The elephant sculptures were originally meant as a tribute to the set design for D.W. Griffith’s 1916 film Intolerance, which was meant as a rebuttal to criticism of his earlier film The Birth of a Nation. A large arch with Babylonian-themed reliefs will be given an art deco upgrade while a fiberglass daybed sculpture by the artist Erika Rothenberg will also be permanently removed after being taken down in 2017 in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Gensler is leading the redevelopment aimed at transitioning the center from a tourist-laden shopping district t...

USC puts Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Freeman House up for sale

2021-07-23T15:29:00-04:00

The University of Southern California (USC) School of Architecture is putting the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Freeman House up for sale. Built in 1924 and named after the clients Samuel and Harriet Freeman, the Freeman House is one of four Wright homes in Los Angeles to include distinct concrete textile blocks along a Mayan Revival theme, the others being the Ennis House, Storer House, and Millard House. Both the Ennis House and Millard House have also been sold in recent years.

The Freeman House in 2008. Image: Wikimedia Commons user Los Angeles.

Set in the Hollywood Hills, the Freeman House measures almost 2,900 square feet, spanning two floors across a sloping site. Wright designed the house using an experimental system of over 12,000 concrete textile blocks inspired by Mayan temples, reinforced with steel to improve resiliency. Intersecting with the house’s strong horizontal emphasis is a series of double-height corner glazed windows overlooking an external patio, combining with ...

Potential earthquake fault below planned Handel Architects-designed development in Hollywood raises new concerns

2020-07-22T15:17:00-04:00

An ongoing dispute between developers Millennium Partners and the regulatory agencies tasked with reviewing a $1 billion Handel Architects-designed mixed-use Hollywood Center development slated for sites surrounding the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood continues.

The development, which could bring more than 1,000 apartments and over 30,000 square feet of retail areas to sites surrounding the existing tower, has been dogged by concerns that a previously undiscovered earthquake fault lies near the project site.

Investigations by The Los Angeles Times have yielded new documents from the California Geological Survey that “strongly support the presence of an active ... fault strand entering the eastern Hollywood Center property,” according to a recent report.

Philip Aarons, a founder of Millennium Partners, countered the new findings in comments to The Los Angeles Times, claiming that “It is clear that the data relied upon by the state is significantly inferior in quality to the data...

Hollywood Center Project near Capitol Records Building moves forward

2020-04-21T11:59:00-04:00

A proposal to build a large high-rise complex near Hollywood and Vine continues to move forward, according to a draft environmental impact report published by the City of Los Angeles. The Hollywood Center development, which would replace parking lots adjacent to the Pantages Theatre and Capitol Records Building, is being developed by MP Los Angeles - an affiliate of Millennium Partners.

Handel Architects and James Corner Field Operations are the collaborating architects on the $1-billion mixed-use Hollywood Center Project.

Previously:

Hawkins\Brown Architects to bring mid-rise, mixed-use tower to Hollywood

2020-03-04T18:51:00-05:00

London- and Los Angeles-based architects Hawkins\Brown Architects have unveiled plans for 1000 Seward, a fanciful 10-story office complex in Los Angeles's Hollywood Studio District.

The mid-rise, mixed-use tower, Urbanize.LA reports, is being developed by The Post Group and Plus Development, and aims to bring 136,000 square feet of office space and 14,400 square feet of ground-floor retail and amenity spaces to the project site.

A rendering for the project depicts a variegated, stepped building articulated in a variety of commercial styles, with lower levels featuring glass storefronts topped by dark metal panel cladding-wrapped offices. This portion of the building features a rooftop terrace that is overlooked by a larger three-story volume marked by expressed diagonal trusses and glass curtainwalls. Higher up, another rooftop terrace is overlooked by a third office block also wrapped in dark paneling. The two upper-level sections are cantilevered on one side above a monumental s...

This is what a major Hollywood Walk of Fame overhaul could look like

2020-01-30T20:08:00-05:00

Wider sidewalks and new street trees are in the works for the iconic 1.3-mile corridor. [...] A new website offers a look at design concepts for the Hollywood Walk of Fame's new master plan - a core component City Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell's Heart of Hollywood initiative.

LA's major tourist draw, the iconic Walk of Fame along a section of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, has experienced nearly six decades of transformation and could be up for a major overhaul soon.

The Heart of Hollywood initiative of Los Angeles Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell recently published a concept plan with further details and designs aiming to drastically improve the Walk of Fame's pedestrian experience.

Image: Gensler, via the Hollywood Walk of Fame concept plan for Heart of Hollywood.

"An 'enhanced complete street' concept has emerged as the favored alternative for the project, which, if implemented, would remove street parking and some automobile travel lanes to allow for wider sidewalks along the Walk of Fame," reports Urbanize LA. "The reclaimed space could be used for new amenities such as sidewalk dining, performance areas, seating and other furniture, playgrounds, and areas for street vendors."

The new concept plan is the first step toward a greater master plan t...

Historic Hollywood movie backdrops saved from the dumpster by Art Directors Guild

2019-12-26T11:15:00-05:00

Hillsides, houses, airports and cathedrals; cityscapes, landscapes and the ocean rocking toward the horizon; courtrooms and bedrooms, bungalows and castles; gas stations, skyscrapers, apartment buildings; the roofs of Paris and New York, corridors, tapestries, train depots and a mineshaft burrowing into an icy mountain. These are the 90 painted backdrops that remain of more than 200 saved through the Art Directors Guild Backdrop Recovery Project

The Los Angele Times takes a look at the Art Directors Guild Backdrop Recovery Project, a two-year-long effort aimed at saving some of the industry’s remaining iconic scene paintings.

Lynne Coakley, president of JC Backings, a Hollywood legacy scene painting company that produced iconic backdrops for movies that include Ben Hur, North By Northwest, and others, tells Mary McNamara of The Los Angeles Times, “It’s only in the last 10 years that we’ve started thinking of them as having historic value. For years, we thought of backings as a commodity; that’s our business.”

That perspective has changed in recent years as the value of these paintings has become better appreciated. Several of the works are heading to the new Renzo Piano Building Workshop-designed Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

Lawsuit against contentious S-shaped towers designed by Natoma Architects in Los Angeles fails

2019-12-06T15:04:00-05:00

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has thrown out a lawsuit initiated against a series of high-rise developments slated for a stretch of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles's Hollywood neighborhood.

The projects in question, The Los Angeles Times reports, include the 905-unit SOM and RCH Studios-designed Crossroads Hollywood development as well as the 731-unit Natoma Architects-designed Palladium Towers project.

VIew of the multi-towered Crossroads Hollywood project designed by SOM and RCH Studios. Image courtesy of Crossroads Hollywood.

The lawsuits were filed by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit group that has come out against a series of dense development proposals in the city. The group, whose headquarters are located directly across the street from the Palladium project site, contends that the new developments will fuel displacement in the surrounding area, which is home to a historic concentration of naturally affordable multi-family housing and has seen a sharp increase in...

L.A. architects are embracing modular multi-family housing

2019-11-18T14:05:00-05:00

Across Los Angeles, architects and developers are embracing factory-built multi-family housing construction across a variety of projects. A selection of recently proposed and currently under construction efforts highlight the fact that while previously limited mostly to single-family projects, modular construction is increasingly being used for larger projects.

In Hollywood, for example, architecture firm Steinberg Hart and developer R.W. Selby & Co. have unveiled plans for a new 202-unit apartment complex that is built using prefabricated modular units.

The development is marked by balcony modules that overlook street-level retail. Image courtesy of Steinberg Hart.

The project, set to be located on a long, narrow site, will feature 14,200 square feet of ground floor retail spaces as well as apartment units marked by projecting covered balconies arranged to express the project's modular construction systems. Urbanize.LA reports that the project will bring a mix of one- and two- be...

Rehabilitation of Pierre Koenig's Case Study House #21 will restore its former glory

2019-07-25T14:58:00-04:00

So when neighbors and onlookers noticed drastic work underway on the site in Laurel Canyon, they feared for the future of the iconic home. [...] it appeared Case Study House No. 21 was starting to slip downhill.

Curbed's Bianca Barragan counters the rumors that Pierre Koenig's Case Study House No. 21 was being demolished by its new owners with a detailed report on the preservation efforts that are currently being performed in order to save the historically significant structure and restore it to its original Mid-century modern glory.

A 2006 photo of the interior court yard. Photo: IK's World Trip/Flickr.

Barragan writes that "when contractors lifted up the concrete slab over the living room floor, they found an 18-inch gap between the ground and where the room’s floor had hovered. The soil had subsided, sliding out under the rest of the foundation." An intensive repair of the original foundation from 1959 will put the home on solid footing for decades to come.