Located at the intersection of La Brea and Slauson Avenues in the Ladera Heights area of Los Angeles, the United Oil Gasoline Station seeks to reinterpret the most ubiquitous
fixture of roadside culture – the service station—this one with a drive-through car wash. In a city where car and consumer culture are so deeply entrenched in its inhabitants’ collective psyche, how they ‘read’ and engage with the city is essentially via the windshields of their vehicles.

The design includes a 12-pump service station, a glass-box mini-market, a car wash and a pocket-park located behind the store. Taking their cues from the infrastructural  beauty of LA’s concrete freeway interchanges, the designers have created a dramatic curving metal roof that rises to a height of almost 11 metres above the gas pumps.  An 8.5-metre high oval channel-glass tower that encloses the ‘cashier pod’  within the convenience store, recalls the large drum-like oil storage tanks located in the rugged hills nearby. The architects have also taken into account the presence of a large number of billboards,
and imagined the entire United Oil Gasoline Station as a kind of architectural sign in itself.