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New York-based developer Millennium Partners has withdrawn their proposal for the $1 billion Handel Architects-designed Hollywood Center in Los Angeles.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...

LA's Cinerama Dome finally has a (far off) future

2021-12-20T20:05:00-05:00

The Cinerama Dome and the attached theater complex formerly known as ArcLight Hollywood plans to reopen, two people familiar with the matter told The Times on Friday. There was no timetable for a potential reopening date, although one source who was not authorized to comment publicly said it could be as early as next year.

The iconic movie theater was previously thought to be in peril following its operator Pacific Theaters April announcement in which they declared that the 58-year-old venue would not be reopening due to financial pressures caused by the pandemic.

A permit filed on November 22nd included provisions for a bar and “general eating place”, according to public records which were then spread across social media. Deadline is reporting that the Welton Becket-designed midcentury landmark, which is one of several such buildings around Los Angeles currently the focus of restoration efforts, won’t come into shape until at least 2024.

Los Angeles's Music Center Plaza makes its public debut

2019-09-06T19:45:00-04:00

RCH Studios recently completed a $41 million renovation of the public plaza that unifies the Music Center arts complex in Downtown Los Angeles.

Flanked on either side by the Welton Becket-designed Mark Taper Forum and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the plaza has been revamped with an eye toward universal design and passive recreation.

Aerial view of the revamped plaza. Image courtesy of Tim Street Porter.

For the project, RCH Studios has added a total of five new structures to the 53-year-old plaza, including a welcome center, a full-service restaurant, a wine bar, a coffee shop, and a series of accessible public restrooms.

The space, designed as a multi-functional “plaza for all,” has been reconsidered by the architects as the Music Center's "fifth venue," joining the Ahmanson Theatre, located behind the Taper Forum building, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which sits across the street.

At the center of the space sits a joyful splash pad, while surrounding areas, formerly composed ...

Before "The Tulip," there was Welton Becket's Reunion Tower

2019-07-17T09:14:00-04:00

With a certain bulb-shaped observation tower in the news again, perhaps now is a good time to revisit another seminal observation tower project: The Welton Becket and Associates-designed Reunion Tower in Dallas, Texas.

Crafted as a three-story, lightbulb-studded geodesic dome hoisted atop a series of monolithic poured-in-place concrete piers, Reunion Tower is among one of the more iconic elements of Dallas’s eclectic and neon-lit skyline. The tower rises to 561-feet in height and is topped in part by a panoramic restaurant designed to revolve around the building’s axis once every 55 minutes, creating one of the more remarkable—and still fully functional—high points of 1970s-era architecture. The restaurant, Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck, according to its website, offers diners “floor-to-ceiling windows offering 360-degree views of the city from the dramatic, revolving dining room.”

View of the Reunion Tower. Image courtesy of Wikimedia user texas_mustang.

Like a New Year’s Eve ball th...

MacDonald Becket, influential Los Angeles architect, dies at age 89

2017-12-07T18:18:00-05:00

MacDonald Becket ’52, former chairman of the board and CEO of the architecture firm Welton Becket and Associates, died in Phoenix, AZ. He was 89. Becket, who graduated from the USC School of Architecture, was a driving force in the development of architecture in Los Angeles. Two of his major roles in California were coordinating the master planning and architectural implementations of the 260-acre Century City project and in the successful renovation of the state capitol building in Sacramento.

Among his many achievements, Becket was a founding contributor to MoCA's Architectural and Design Endowment in Los Angeles. He also designed the personal homes of former US presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford attesting to Becket's far reaching influence.

The Parker Center is set for demolition, what other midcentury icons are next?

2017-05-22T20:12:00-04:00

The Parker Center, depending on who you ask, is either a midcentury icon, or a powerful symbol of Los Angeles' racist past. Located downtown, the building was home to the LAPD up until 2009 when they relocated due to expensive retrofits needed on the site. Designed by Welton Becket—the architect behind some of LA's greatest identifiers such as the Capitol Records Building, the Theme Building and the Cinerama Dome—the former LAPD headquarters is seen by historic preservationists, particularly the LA Conservancy, as a historical landmark due to its midcentury stylings. However, beyond being an architectural landmark, the building, as home to the LAPD during an era of racist policing, also serves as a sobering reminder of LA's troubling past. The land upon which the center was constructed had been seized from Japanese property owners less than a decade after Japanese Internment and William H. Parker himself, whom the building was named after, was associated with ushering in policies of...