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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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

A landmark designation effort backfires in the push to save one historic Los Angeles restaurant from the wrecking ball

2021-06-18T13:23:00-04:00

LA's famed Taix Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard made headlines earlier this month after a strange ruling by the City Council to designate only certain elements of the century-old establishment a historic landmark in an unprecedented move that could have ramifications for preservation efforts in Los Angeles and across the country for years to come.

The LA Times is reporting that efforts to save Taix from an encroaching redevelopment scheme culminated in a unanimous decision to limit the designation to the restaurant’s signage and cherrywood-topped bar.

The decision is unlike any other in recent history in that it eschews almost the entirety of the Norman Revival building in favor of a plan that recognizes only non-structural components as historic landmarks. By limiting the designations to the bar and advertising, critics say Los Angeles City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has created a dangerous standard that can be abused by development-hungry business interests where the opportunit...

Richard Neutra's Chuey House in danger of being torn down in bankruptcy sale

2017-09-05T14:13:00-04:00

Richard Neutra’s glass and steel Chuey House in the Hollywood Hills is being marketed as a ‘tear down’ for $10.5m. The architect designed the midcentury modern home for poet Josephine Ain Chuey in 1956, and it has since passed down to her niece and nephew, who filed for bankruptcy in June. It’s now being sold as a ‘truly unique development opportunity’, with no mention of its architectural merit – just its ‘spectacular’ Sunset Plaza Drive location and ‘unmatched panoramic views..."

Iconic, elegant, and now endangered: one of the works of the masters of mid-century modern architecture has been listed more for its lot than for the exquisitely cantilevered structure itself. After its completion, Josephine Ain, who was living with her husband Richard Chuey, wrote to Neutra that “You are an alchemist who has transmuted earth, house, and sky into a single enchantment. I can only hope that I can in some measure grow up to the wholeness and balance embodied here.”

Image: Julius Shulman

Frank Gehry's Sunset Strip mixed-user approved by LA City Planning Commission, with 15% affordable units

2016-08-01T18:11:00-04:00

[John Irwin, one of the project's developers, noted:] "This is the right direction for development in L.A., embracing both the benefits of good planning—as well as a commitment to providing affordable housing at varying income levels, which we have agreed to increase” [...] Ryu’s Chief of Staff Sarah Dusseault argued before the commissioners that setting such a low bar for affordable housing would set a bad precedent as the city is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis.

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