Plans for what could become one of Downtown’s most unique-looking skyscrapers received unanimous approval today from the city’s planning commission.
With cantilevered swimming pools jutting out of its upper floors, the tower proposed for across the street from Pershing Square has been said to look like an in-progress game of Jenga. Commissioner Samantha Millman called it an “ambitious and audacious project.”
— Curbed LA
The Arquitectonica-designed 53-story hotel and condo tower with its precariously cantilevering glass-bottom swimming pools (hey, it's LA!) first appeared on Archinect last fall and quickly became the subject of much debate.
Additional renderings were released in May this year.
If all goes as planned, JMF Development Co. aims to have the 784-foot tower completed by 2023.
Think of the symbolism of this. Desperate, homeless people on the streets below gaze towards the sky, seeing bathing suit-clad beautiful people swimming forty stories above them in glass-bottom lap pools.
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Very beautiful architecture. I just would like to understand why and how these types of buildings with all of that glass are allowed to be built in downtown Los Angeles? When a massive quake hits, do they the earth is just going to open up and swallow all of the debris including glass?
And the hilarity continues...
Normally I would criticize something like this. But this is a pretty interesting twist on housing types. The developer has effectively merged the typical LA suburban house with a pool and the skyscraper. I’d bet the combined sloshing mass of the pool water actually helps with seismic dampening too...
I dont have the words to describe how much i hate this kind of architecture, and how destructive I think it is to the urban environment.
Lap pools in the sky for the 1%.
Meanwhile there are some 60,000 homeless in L.A. and the poverty rate there is over 20%.
Think of the symbolism of this. Desperate, homeless people on the streets below gaze towards the sky, seeing bathing suit-clad beautiful people swimming forty stories above them in glass-bottom lap pools.
I agree with the symbolic aspects, but truthfully, we've always had vanity and ostentatious displays of wealth through out history (The Louvre etc(. The difference today is the incredible disharmony this kind of architectural language (if you can call it that) creates a backdrop that has such an appealing character. The shame of what's happening today in Downtown LA is that it's relatively intact pre-war downtowns is not something to squander.
It's various historic buildings play well together, regardless of style. Then you get these type of projects that say, f%*# everything else, look at me B*#%&'s! Downtown can take the banality of several glass buildings and still maintain its character, but this kind of look at me building is like a loud obnoxious drunk in public.
exactly.
It's Arquitectonica. Why is anyone surprised?
No one's surprised. It's just disheartening that we continue to build such stupid and wasteful buildings in an age of diminishing resources.
It also pisses me off that this uses 2-point perspective at such a high FOV. The rendering is as grotesque as the building.
Nicely put, Thayer-D. The first question might be the decision to zone from 10 to 50+ stories. I'm really curious what might work in such a narrow space. This, of course, is hideous.
Either it will stick out like a sore thumb in the LA skyline for years to come.
Or it is the future, in LA as elsewhere, as the 10-story buildings are razed for new high rises.
(10 minutes work, and I have marginal PS skills.)
That's the sense, that no one is really planning for the future. I sense a free-for-all coming.
I like this version of shiny linear glass much better:
Looks like a game of jenga.
Just keeping thinking of the movie Mechanic w/Jason Statham and how he bust a hole and kills the guy swimming in his cantilevered pool.
You had me at Jason Statham.
people think this is dumb because it's conspicuous, but there are tens or hundreds of thousands of swimming pools in single family homes around california (not to mention every other place in the country)... which is way less sustanable than this.
Spoiler alert: this (like 95% of the other "projects" featured here on A-nect) is not going to be built. It's true that other projects which may share some DNA with it will be. But God's watery Jenga game here will remain on paper and screens.
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