LA's Hollywood neighborhood is undergoing a massive transformation with new developments popping up everywhere. MAD Architects just introduced another $500 million design proposal to the mix which is guaranteed to stand out from the sea of often unbearably bland new buildings.
Located at 6061 Sunset Boulevard, only a few blocks away from Netflix' new Hollywood office campus, the planned office tower, dubbed 'The Star,' intrigues with an unusual shape we would expect from the team at MAD and features landscaped gardens and terraces integrated throughout its 22 floors.
A short video rendering released this week reveals a textured glass facade and external elevator pods sliding up and down the building's spines.
Video courtesy MAD Architects
"Hollywood has been a signature center for culture and creativity for a long time," Ma Yansong, MAD's founding principal, shared. "The Star will be the new iconic landmark in Hollywood and continue to nurture the public's inspiration and creativity."
Per the architects: "Knitting together the urban and natural landscapes, its varied massing narrows at its upper levels, recalling an organic form, and creates a soft addition to the skyline, marked by lush greenery. Terraced green spaces at street level ground the building in its context and create moments for public connection. Its flexible floorplans offer abundant gathering spaces and access to nature, encouraging a new kind of work-life environment that prioritizes balance, reflection and collaboration."
The Beijing and LA-based team at MAD Architects is currently also making progress on another high-profile project in South Los Angeles, the $1billion Lucas Museum of Narrative Art which broke ground in 2018 and is expected to open to the public in 2023.
20 Comments
No, please. This looks designed for a B-grade Chinese city. Please do not bring this to Hollywood. Just please.
ZHA geometry + Trees is MAD's m.o. They're cornering that market niche.
it's nice. i like how much bigger it is than everything around.
this only costs 500 milllion? looks way more expensive. also why is it called 'the star'? looks more like a bubble or something.
This is insane and crazy!
We are in a crisis of epic proportions where California (and the rest of the world) is literally on fire. Affordability, homelessness, waste, climate change and social equity are serious issues we are dealing with and don't know what kind of future the young will have to endured.
Why does this edifice needs attention? It's not even sustainable and the location is terrible.
The sad part, this will be approved.
The trees can't catch on fire, they're behind glass!
Yet a building can't teach a tree how to live & grow, especially inside a building and a controlled environment. Nature will always win.
I like the futuristic naivety of this blob...feels very Haus-Rucker-Co / early CoopHimmelb(l)au!
I like it! Hollywood needs drama like this. There are too many pedestrian buildings clogging up the town. The advent of Hollywood and its industry changed every culture on the face of the earth. The new Academy Museum will help to recognize that. An economic resurgence will drive the point home.
Future headline: MAD finds solution to California wildfires. Proposes to encase all forests in glass.
"The Star will be the new iconic landmark in Hollywood and continue to nurture the public's inspiration and creativity."
The language, like the design, is as precious as it is meaningless. Icon of what? Now if they put two of these up—
A ridiculous glazed helmet mirroring bloated conceptions of self-worth that are increasingly anachronistic - no thank you Mr. Ma Yanson /..\
That's an exaggerated illustration. The building beyond is 18 story but it gets dwarfed by this 22 story proposal for a gig office. It dwarfs the Morphosis Emerson College building too. But that must be a marketing thing.
Do I want to see it built? Sure, there's nothing sacrilegious about that stretch of Sunset Blvd. The scale imparities are already in place. Somewhat a lot of people deny that's the case. This is another characteristic of LA's look and feel. Stop dreaming as if Los Angeles arteries should be like Champs Élysées.
They are (Wilshire, Sunset, Santa Monica, Burbank, and others).., all like whatever man. Personally, I love it that way. It pumps down the developers' iconic designs for a spectacle, blends it with whateverness even perhaps it's not whatever.
Agree with you Orhan, but MAD could surely do better than this, if only to address all those matters of scale that you rightly point out. Having seen many such projects in (as I mentioned) B-grade Chinese cities, which are done mostly so some mayor can hang his hat on it and advance within the CCP, I feel it is culturally and socially out of place.
"This is another characteristic of LA's look and feel"
Just planted 100 trees and advertise that we save the earth. The cooling load will be huge and destroy the earth. or it will be completely black building to meet CA energy code.
it's just rendering...nothing more than that.
Meanwhile, three miles west on the Strip, a Morphosis project is under consideration.
Both of this project and the MAD building look bland to me so they should fit in very well.
i don't get the hate. seems like a cool office for some media company
speaking of "unbearably bland new buildings"
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