Archinect - News

Arquitectonica's 8850 Sunset development gets city approval

2024-08-30T10:41:00-04:00

Arquitectonica has announced that the long-awaited 8850 Sunset Boulevard development has received approval from the City of West Hollywood.

The proposed structure will stand 11 stories tall and feature a 90-room hotel, 78 residences, including 16 affordable units, and commercial spaces on the ground level. A breezeway will weave through the building and connect to a park located at the center of the structure. The development will also host a reimagined Viper Room.

Previously on Archinect: Arquitectonica replaces Morphosis on the former 'Viper Room' Sunset Strip redevelopment

Previous reports have noted that construction of the project is expected to occur over three years.

Brookings research gives Los Angeles communities guidance for future ADU implementation

2024-05-02T18:02:00-04:00

New research published recently by the Brookings Institution has provided details of how local government in Los Angeles can galvanize a newfound abundance of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) through policy changes in order to combat an ongoing housing crisis currently affecting more than one million Angelenos.

Authors Jenny Schuetz and Eve Devens state: “The Los Angeles region offers a useful setting to explore the prospects of affordable ADUs. Four jurisdictions within the region have developed affordable ADU pilot programs. One program, the city of Los Angeles’ LA ADU Accelerator Program, offers operating subsidies for existing ADUs, while the other three offer development subsidies as well as vouchers to cover operating costs.”

This research can be used to bolster architects’ so-called “toolkit” of affordable housing solutions in conjunction with the recent Harvard Center for Housing joint study that compared the strengths and failures of California’s policies with those in othe...

Olson Kundig completes West Hollywood homes designed for ‘craft and material expression’

2024-03-05T11:09:00-05:00

Olson Kundig has completed a series of custom single-family homes in West Hollywood. Collectively named ‘The Houses at 8899 Beverly’ the eight homes seek to be “harmoniously linked yet individual” with architectural forms “combining natural materials such as wood, steel, glass, concrete, and stone.”

Concrete House. Image credit: Nils Timm

“These eight distinct contemporary homes are woven into the fabric of their vibrant West Hollywood neighborhood at the base of the Hollywood Hills,” said Kevin M. Kudo-King, co-Design Principal at Olson Kundig. “While each one has its own identity – just as the eclectic neighboring houses do – collectively, they are about craft and material expression.”

Bronze House. Image credit: Nils Timm

The homes form the final part of the wider 8899 Beverly developement which opened in 2022. The project centers on the Los Angeles International Design Center, a mid-century modernist build...

Tesla’s EV-charging drive-in concept is under construction in Los Angeles

2024-01-17T18:44:00-05:00

Construction on Tesla's new Stantec-designed drive-in diner and electric vehicle charging concept is making progress in Los Angeles, as the local NBC station reports.

The project, which wasn’t approved until last April, is currently taking shape at 7001 W Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. Once it is completed, the retro-inspired dining space and rest area will offer drivers 32 total electric charging stations while serving classic American roadside fare wrapped in a two-story and 9,300-square-foot faux Streamline Moderne package.

Elon Musk developed the idea after thinking out loud on his Twitter account in 2018. Tesla says the station will operate on a 24-hour capacity once it opens later in the fall.

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

The development is significant as other fast food chains across the country are preparing their own EV charging station plans, according to Axios. A two-scre...

Site preparations begin for Norman Foster’s One Beverly Hills

2024-01-03T14:49:00-05:00

Site preparations are underway in Los Angeles in advance of the 50-month construction phase that will bring the Foster + Partners-designed One Beverly Hills residential towers to a plot adjacent to the Beverly Hilton and other area hospitality icons.

Gensler is serving as the project’s executive architect while RIOS has been contracted to deliver the landscaped portion of the design, which occupies the total 17.5-acre site that includes another 8.5-acre botanical garden in compliment of each tower’s biophilic terraces.

The project will be realized at 28- and 31-stories, respectively, making them the tallest design in Beverly Hills since the Bank of America building at 9454 Wilshire Boulevard opened in 1968. According to Urbanize LA, the scheme calls for 255 condominiums, 79 hotel suites, and approximately 30,000-square-feet of commercial space, along with subterranean parking spaces for up to 1,900 vehicles.

Image rendering courtesy DBOX for Alagem Capital.

The project will cost ap...

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 ...

The Sunset Strip may get a mini Las Vegas Sphere-ish display

2023-11-09T17:45:00-05:00

A new spherical LED billboard display appears ready to grace Los Angeles’ Sunset Boulevard as planners are preparing to review a developer proposal for "The Sphere on Sunset" entertainment venue in West Hollywood.

Urbanize LA was first to report on the Las Vegas Sphere-like structure before it goes up for review in front of the West Hollywood Planning Commission's Design Review Subcommittee today (November 9).

The project would culminate at 8410 Sunset Boulevard. Its brief calls for the demolition of an existing café at the site, an outdoor video display, and construction of a 49-foot wide sphere and a 2,460-square-foot building to be used partially for podcast production. A new 2,400-square-foot pedestrian plaza and 1,350-square-foot roof terrace/viewing platform will be enacted as well. Los Angeles’ SAEE Studio is listed as the architect.

Image courtesy SAEE Studio

The project hopes to follow in the 516-foot-wide footsteps of the wildly successful Las Vegas Sphere, which has drawn...

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 ...

Arquitectonica's 8850 Sunset development gets a revised look

2023-05-10T16:47:00-04:00

Arquitectonica has released an update to its previously proposed redevelopment project at 8850 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood.

The former site of the notorious Viper Room will now feature an increased number of affordable housing units and market-rate condos while retaining its planned 5-star hotel component, which has been reduced from 113 to 90 rooms.

8850 Sunset Boulevard. Image courtesy Arquitectonica

The revised concept also comes in a new envelope with curved balcony decks and one less full story. The Viper Room itself will be revised and expanded to meet “today’s entertainment standards” with a memorabilia display, upgraded stage, better soundproofing, and a recording studio all included inside. LED mesh window coverings appear also to have been removed from the updated facade.

8850 Sunset Boulevard. Image courtesy Arquitectonica

Also part of the update is an added public plaza at street level and breezeway connected to a new “park-like” interior courtyard at the center of ...

Formation Association designs new west coast HQ for Phillips in LA

2023-04-03T18:58:00-04:00

The west coast operation of London-based auction house Phillips has a new home courtesy of Los Angeles’ Formation Association.

Their West Hollywood design was unveiled recently and features a remodeled series of existing structures that includes three showrooms, a covered patio, and offices set amongst a bespoke covering of ficus trees.

Image © Eric Staudenmaier

A rounded marquee greets visitors to the main showroom’s Santa Monica Boulevard entrance, punctuated by an overhead oculus and encased in a heavy gray dash stucco material that conjures the "textures of workaday local building materials in a sculpted manner [while] lending a distinctly southern California identity to the architectural treatment."

Image © Eric Staudenmaier

Inside, a sequence of light-filled gallery spaces begins with the largest Showroom A, which is framed by a soffit ceiling and features a second oculus that plays host to an exposed si...

Carolina A. Miranda thinks Tom Wiscombe's new billboard should prompt a 'reckoning in architecture'

2022-08-25T17:09:00-04:00

Formally known as the Sunset Spectacular, it consists of a trio of massive steel panels that converge at a height of 67 feet, two of their surfaces draped in irregularly shaped digital screens bearing ads for tech overlords Amazon and Meta. If a game designer for “Halo” were to imagine a billboard, this is probably what it would look like. [...] There is an important story embedded in the design of the Sunset Spectacular. It has nothing to do with its forms.

Responding to the New York Times’ recent “puff piece” on embattled SCI-Arc professor Tom Wiscombe’s long-awaited Sunset Spectacular billboard in West Hollywood, critic Carolina A. Miranda offered a rather cutting take on Joseph Giovannini‘s “extra curious” failure to mention what has become a rather viral academic and professional controversy.

Previously on Archinect: Controversy at SCI-Arc over labor practices leads to faculty members placed on leave. Isolated incident or a wake-up call for the industry at large?

Wiscombe was the centerpiece of the recent investigation into student intern labor abuse at SCI-Arc and has been placed on administrative leave as a result of his alleged actions. “To many skeptics, it seemed as if the architectural establishment were intent on scrubbing the record clean,” Miranda wrote, citing the chorus of derision that has swelled on social media. “This whole episode also calls into question how critics (myself included) write about architecture.”

...

Arquitectonica replaces Morphosis on the former 'Viper Room' Sunset Strip redevelopment

2022-03-04T15:10:00-05:00

A significant change has been made in the redevelopment of West Hollywood's landmark Viper Room as an originally-planned design from Morphosis has been nixed in favor of a more conservative scheme from Miami-based Arquitectonica.

The previous design team had originally anticipated breaking ground on a much-maligned twin-volume scheme this year with an end date expected for 2025. As of now, there is no word as to a cause for the change in direction from Silver Creek Development Co. available to the press.

Rendering of the previously proposed 8850 Sunset Boulevard development. Image courtesy of Morphosis/Kilograph.

Updated plans reveal a more colorful, pared-down design that is more in keeping with other commercial and residential developments located along WeHo's 8- and 9000 blocks of Sunset Boulevard. The new 12-story building features a lively rooftop space atop a mixed-used program defined by a south-facing setback and terraced facade with LED-lit mesh window coverings and a host o...

Morphosis-designed 8850 Sunset Boulevard releases environmental study, updated project timeline

2021-09-20T12:03:00-04:00

An updated timeline for the controversial 8850 Sunset Boulevard development has been provided along with new draft environmental study detailing changes to the West Hollywood site.

According to its developers, construction of the Morphosis-designed building is now set to begin in 2022 with a completion date slated for 2025, nearly a full year off of the project’s timeline when last updated in September of 2019.

The planned 15-story hotel and apartment development features a split design, united by a skybridge that helps to separate the volumes and frame a 120-foot-wide opening adjacent to Los Angeles’ famed Viper Room nightclub.

The updated timeline still requires approval from the city of West Hollywood. Archinect will have more details once a groundbreaking date is announced.

LACMA's demolished buildings will live on thanks to this Los Angeles artist

2021-08-02T14:23:00-04:00

The proposed installation is the work of Cayetano Ferrer, a Los Angeles-based artist who has long had an interest in the ways in which issues of design and memory intersect. It is being executed in collaboration with landscape architect Bron Ruf. Ferrer acknowledges that working with fragments of a building whose demolition was loudly contested and for which many Angelenos felt a deep nostalgia is a loaded thing.

The Pereira-designed pavillions have been at the center of the doomed effort to save LACMA's original La Brea campus from what critics say is an unnecessary and expensive redevelopment campaign. Ferrer shares he got the idea while working on a conservation research project at LACMA's Art + Tech Lab in the midst of the debate over the beloved modernist buildings was reaching its conclusion. Ruf is currently a vice president at the landscaping firm Moss and Associates.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by @tano4g

The demolished pieces will be reassembled and installed in a new pocket park adjacent to the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. Some of the fragments will be exhibited in a one-day show at the Commonwealth and Council gallery in Pasadena.

You can read Carolina Miranda's full interview with Ferrer here.

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...

Ric Abramson tapped to lead West Hollywood's new Urban Design and Architecture Studio

2019-11-15T13:17:00-05:00

Los Angeles area architect Ric Abramson has been selected to head a new Urban Design and Architecture Studio housed within the City of West Hollywood's Community Services Department.

Abramson, whose practice, WorkPlays studio*architecture, is based in West Hollywood, has been active in the city's project review and design commission boards for many years. According to a report in Wehoville, the architect will oversee the city's sometimes-contentious Design Review process while also applying his expertise toward the redesign of West Hollywood's streets and public spaces. Abramson will also be tasked, according to the report, with implementing a series of new urban design strategies for the city as the West Hollywood negotiates for a potential transit line extension through the city in advance of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The focus of these efforts will include improving the city's "architecture, infrastructure, and the relationship of private developments to public spac...

Residents despise proposed Morphosis' Sunset Strip development

2019-10-14T11:30:00-04:00

The Morphosis-designed Sunset Strip development Viper Rooms recently sparked much debate among Archinectors, and now it has ignited further dispute among WeHo residents. "Residents erupted in anger when West Hollywood city staffers announced Thursday night that the aesthetics of a Morphosis-designed redevelopment of the Viper Room on the Sunset Strip would not be considered in a state-mandated environmental analysis," reports Curbed LA.

The backlash came at a public community meeting held by the city of West Hollywood "to update the residents on the project, review the environmental impact report process, and get feedback from the community." But, it's tough to get feedback when the majority of participants detest the proposed design. According to Curbed LA, only one of the thirty people in attendance approved of the design.

The majority, however, feel that the avant-garde look doesn't "belong on Sunset Boulevard," but "could be in Dubai or Vegas." Moreover, it appears that due to s...

Morphosis-designed Sunset Strip development: timeline details emerge

2019-09-23T15:30:00-04:00

According to an initial study distributed by the City of West Hollywood, construction of the proposed development - which is being called 8850 Sunset Boulevard - is anticipated to begin in May 2021. Work would conclude after approximately 32 months, with project delivery expected in February 2024.

The exuberant 15-story mixed-use development on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood first emerged as a new proposal in December 2018.

Urbanize LA has now shared more refined project details for 8850 Sunset Boulevard, including a proposed timeline with an anticipated kick-off in May 2021.

Women-focused co-working space The Wing makes a new home in West Hollywood

2019-04-20T11:31:00-04:00

Los Angeles is filled with members-only workspaces that are quickly becoming overcrowded and perhaps not filled with enough women. However, this past week the "women's - focused co-working and networking space" The Wing opened its first LA location. Located in West Hollywood off of Santa Monica Boulevard the 11,00 square foot location offers more than an open concept workspace.

Image by Madeline Tolle, courtesy of The Wing

Officially starting in New York, the members of The Wing have created a space where women can not only work but also thrive. Before we get to the heavily curated and designed interiors, the location offers a space for women to feel empowered, safe, and free to "create, connect, and generate opportunities." Other than the typical co-working space amenities, The Wing provides a locally sourced menu, ample work, and outdoor spaces and a pump room.

Image by Madeline Tolle, courtesy of The Wing

Image by Madeline Tolle, court...

Morphosis unveils wild new design for a hotel to be built on the infamous Viper Room site on Sunset Strip

2018-12-17T14:47:00-05:00

The project, which would rise at 8850-8878 Sunset Boulevard, calls for the construction of a 15-story building featuring 115 guest rooms, ground-floor commercial space, and various guest amenities. The proposed development would also incorporate 31 condominiums, 10 units of affordable housing, and parking for up to 300 vehicles.

The 15-story, 200-foot-tall design is composed of two drastically different volumes separated by a large open gap. The volume on the east side of the lot appears to be a relatively standard steel and glass orthogonal structure, while the form on the west side of the lot is a highly articulated, fluid structure that brings Zaha Hadid's forms to mind. The base of the two structures in the concept design rendering appears to provide some outdoor space, perhaps an outdoor amphitheater, above the ground floor commercial level.

Here's your chance to buy Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House #21B

2018-10-12T13:33:00-04:00

The Bailey House, one of the approximately 20 surviving Los Angeles residences from Arts & Architecture magazine’s Case Study House program is once again up for grabs. Designated CSH No. 21, the Hollywood Hills home was built between 1956 and ’58 by Pierre Koenig for psychologist Walter Bailey and his wife Mary, whom Arts & Architecture described as a “contemporary-minded” couple with no children and an informal lifestyle.

Looking to purchase some property in the Hollywood Hills? Something iconic maybe, preferably midcentury? How about a Case Study House? — Lucky you! The Pierre Koenig-designed CSH #21B 'Walter Bailey House' just came back on the market and asks for $3.6 million.

Frank Gehry's Sunset Strip mixed-user unanimously approved by L.A. City Council

2016-11-03T13:17:00-04:00

the developer, Townscape Partners, agreed to reduce its tallest tower to 178 feet and add more affordable housing and more parking spaces. It will also provide $2 million to ease traffic congestion. The project will have 229 residential units, including 38 for low-income families. There will be 65,000 square feet of commercial space and a pedestrian plaza.

When Gehry's Sunset Strip development was approved by the L.A. City Planning Commission last August, the plan called for 28 affordable housing units (15% of the total stock)—a number that some at the Commission meeting were concerned set a "low bar" for a development of its size, stature and density (especially given the city's ongoing housing crisis).

The City Council's approval came with 10 more affordable housing units—approximately 17% of the total stock. The entire project includes two residential towers, a shopping center and gardens.

Related on Archinect:

Tom Wiscombe redesigns the L.A. billboard (and is chosen over Zaha Hadid's proposal)

2016-10-20T12:39:00-04:00

Although Los Angeles has had its battles over supergraphics—those painted on advertisements that often stretch multiple stories on a building's facade—the billboard as a concept has received substantially less attention, unless the provocative imagery on it causes fender benders. However, Tom Wiscombe's proposal for digital, vertically aligned, two-sided billboards that allow people to walk inside of them injects new life into an otherwise sleepy structure, making them less car-centric and more about public space.

The proposed billboards, which were chosen via a West Hollywood RFP over designs submitted by Zaha Hadid, Gensler, and the MAK Center, will be placed in public plazas along West Hollywood's section of Sunset Boulevard.

For more on Tom Wiscombe:

Schindler Lab Initiative recounts intricate process behind Schindler House artistic interventions

2015-03-24T10:20:00-04:00

This publication documents an exhibition-oriented initiative that prompts artists and architects to develop installations highlighting Rudolph M. Schindler’s domestic experiment...Visitors often ask detailed questions. They are curious about Schindler’s thought process when designing and constructing the house; how the house has been used, understood, and canonized throughout the decades; and how the house is holding up today.

For years, the Schindler House in West Hollywood has served as a cultural backdrop for a multitude of MAK Center exhibitions that have -- in turn -- continuously reinvented the experience of the house and also uniquely demonstrate the ongoing need to preserve the house. Whether engaging with the house itself, examining its use as a domestic space, or reflecting on its 93-year-old history as a modernist icon, every one of these artistic interventions resulted from a meticulous process of discussion, debate, and creative problem solving -- all of which the MAK Center chronicles in an online publication known as the Schindler Lab.

First initiated in 2011 by MAK Center consultant and cultural producer Sara Daleiden, the Schindler Lab is divided into sections that starts off with the Schindler House's architecture and history. The publication then goes on to present the variety of perspectives, proposals, and after-thoughts that architects, designers, artists, curators, and administrators...

Architecture Review: West Hollywood Library among top works

2011-09-30T19:28:08-04:00

The new library across from the Pacific Design Center strikes an appealingly upbeat tone, borrowing from various architectural influences to become one of the most impressive public pieces in the region in a decade.

An Ellsworth Kelly Facade and a George Bellows Retrospective

2011-09-30T00:04:00-04:00

Matthew Marks arrived at Ellsworth Kelly’s studio in Columbia County, N.Y., last year with an architectural model of his new Los Angeles-area gallery. It was meant as both visual aid and inspiration. Mr. Marks was hoping to entice Mr. Kelly into creating something for the building’s facade.

The NYT discusses the future West Hollywood Matthew Marks Gallery, designed by ZELLNERPLUS, with Ellsworth Kelly sculpture-embellished façade.

Location: West Hollywood, California. 2011
Design Architect: ZELLNERPLUS
Structural Engineer: Gordon Polon SE
MEP Engineer: Creative Engineering Group
General Contractor: Tyler Development Corporation

More info

Opening tonight in LA ~ WATERMARKS: Acqua Alta, Resiliency, and Precise Meanders

2011-09-07T17:50:40-04:00

Watermarks opens tonight at the WUHO Gallery at 7pm. If you come, make sure to bring your wellies. Architect Jennifer Bonner filled the Hollywood gallery floor with water in order to provoke a discussion of crisis, drought, and watershed geographies. For those on the east coast who weathered Irene, the question of flooded environments is not an abstraction, but a critical reality. For West Coast types, the installation heightens the awareness of arid landscape ecology and potential future scenarios.

Watermarks will only be at WUHO for one week, so make sure you come see this unusual and provocative installation.

Opening | September 7th, 2011 – 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Exhibition | September 7th through September 11th, 2011
WUHO | 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028

The Watermarks installation simulates Venice’s Acqua Alta, documents resiliency across the American landscape, and explores representational techniques for water fluctuation.

In Venice, Italy high tides annually...

"John Loved This" : John Chase's West Hollywood

2011-05-19T19:42:55-04:00

The late John Chase was the City of West Hollywood's urban designer for 14 years. During that time, he made his mark on every corner of West Hollywood, helping transform Santa Monica Boulevard into a pedestrian-friendly strip, shepherding high-quality development, commissioning well-designed signage, and carving out much-needed pocket parks.

On May 21, John's birthday, a group of his friends, family, co-workers, and collaborators will lead a walking tour across the city to experience John's legacy. Architects and city leaders will meet the group at the various projects to talk about working with John and offer advice on how designers and developers can collaborate on successful urban spaces."

Cesar Pelli's that 70's dream is about to come true

2011-05-07T14:56:00-04:00

When architect Cesar Pelli built his aka 'Blue Whale' Pacific Design Center in 1975, the West Coast officially declared it was going to be the center of the decorating universe. Almost forty years later, and with the addition of green and red compartments, that primary-shaped colorful dream is nearly and retroactively fulfilled. One potential problem is, centrally located design showrooms are also so yesterday, and there are floors of vacant office spaces everywhere in the city.