Ahead of this week’s scheduled planning commission meeting in Santa Monica, Gehry Partners has revealed updated renderings for the proposed Ocean Avenue Project that would install a new mixed-use cultural campus in the heart of Los Angeles’ beachy Westside.
The proposal calls for the creation of a new 120-room hotel, 100 deed-restricted apartment units, 36,000 square feet of retail and dining accommodation, and a 35,000-square-foot museum to be contained within an existing two-acre plot, with two additional landmarked structures being included as bookends for the cultural entity. If approved, construction is expected to take place over a period of 34 to 36 months with a total budget of around $350 million for the entire project.
Renderings appear to show a vibrant pedestrian scene punctuated by two undulated forms reminiscent of Gehry’s recent LUMA Arles Tower and the Building 32 design he completed for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004. The development, situated at the intersection of Ocean and Santa Monica Boulevard, will feature an observation deck and network of public terraces on top of the buildings and is one of two being prepared by Gehry and the Worthe Real Estate Group in addition to the pair’s soon-to-be-completed Warner Bros. expansion in Burbank.
Gehry’s team says 25 of the apartments will be reserved for renters that earn between 30 and 80 percent of Santa Monica’s relatively high median income. The development is one of several poised to transform the seaside community in the coming years along with other major projects from Pelli Clarke & Partners and Grimshaw.
Gehry himself lives in Santa Monica and is looking to continue to build momentum in LA following the recent announcements of two new projects downtown, and the successful realization of his long-awaited YOLA Center in Inglewood this past fall.
The planning committee will make its final decision tomorrow, Wednesday, May 18, at 5:30 PM PST. An agenda for the meeting can be found here. Archinect will share additional project updates as they are made available.
27 Comments
around santa monica, he is the local architect...
Culturally adept Architecture. I vote digitally to APPROVE; his office is impressive for advanced resolutions on code compliance; LEGALIZE LA.
...how many times have we seen the same horrible architecture from Frank? He should just go away....along with Bjarke Ingels.
truly awesome work. i love that morons don't get it.
If you don't get it and think it is unattractive you are a moron?
pretty easy to "get" this same old schtick
"Your opinion on a subjective matter doesn't agree with mine. Therefore I must insult you." Check.
if you have the ability to stop being a moron, it's not an insult, just a bit of light ribbing. the onus is on the moron in question to come about to the proper way of thinking.
Photos and renderings are nifty! They show (or pretend to) so much. They also can hide even more. How about 1) a site plan, and 2) a ground floor plan? These are essential for understanding any project, especially a block-sized one with several structures and public spaces in-between-- not to mention a site holding adjacent historic buildings and facing the ocean.
Would be great to see some details. The relationship between skin, space, and structure varies a lot between Gehry projects. Most of the time, the designs go for regular boxes surrounded by struts propping up a billowing second skin. Some designs have one, twisted skin. The best ones translate the skins' swirls into spatial magic.
Would the interior walls also be compound curves?
I drive by that site every morning during the work week. In my opinion, the last thing that corner needs or deserves is a giant melting lump of metal.
One of FOG's very best projects (in my opinion) was built two blocks south in about 1980. Santa Monica Place was both big and modest at the same time, very inventive and satisfying in its architecture and urban design despite its budgetary limits. Sadly, it was neutered and ruined a few years back by new owners.
Hey, maybe the same thing'll happen here! This thing gets built, and then in forty years someone completely changes it to make it good ;O]
And a little further east is his Edegmar mixed use project which I like a whole lot.
I agree, Citizen. I always liked the original Santa Monica Place. It had a really smart plan. I think it was the very best of the LA shopping malls at the time.
I think that era was the best work of FOG’s career.
You and I are in furious agreement!
Not sure if it really worked well as a retail project. The couple of times I went in there, it was a dark, dingy mess....
Gehry’s team says 25 of the apartments will be reserved for renters that earn between 30 and 80 percent of Santa Monica’s relatively high median income.
25 of 100 apartments, right? I'm not sure what deed-restricted means.
I've always wondered what affordable housing set-asides mean in real terms and what effect they have. 2020 figures put individual median income in Santa Monica at about $60k, and household at about $97k. I'm too lazy to work the math for 30 to 80% of that. What we don't see is how much rent they will pay—and would it be on a sliding scale? My suspicion is that the efforts (merely promotional or legally mandated?) are token and that rent would still be exorbitant for many. Also, will they end up in an expensive neighborhood where they can't afford much?
One reason Gaudi intrigues us so much is that he didn't build that much. His work exists as exceptions, and they stand out in a much broader context of older, traditional buildings. The contrast fuels thought and debates about past vs. present.
But what happens when we remove context, or when Gehry and similar continue to proliferate and become the context?
Now we say, oh, another Gehry. For armchair observers like me, it loses its fizz. Something that was once unusual no longer shocks or surprises. So what does it accomplish? How long will it keep our interest? Distinctive but restrained work survives for those very reasons. It doesn't try to stir but set a base that will engage without distracting, that will last.
I'm also curious if such mixed-use development does help build community, and if so what kind. Is this a trend, or a fad? Or is it based on anything substantial? Someone do a follow-up 10-20 years from now?
I do like this—what is it?
Gary, I think that's a rich developer's ode to John Chamberlaine. FrankGehry gave it to them. Very interesting that it works at that scale and as a building. He is good.
At the development, there will easily be more people around than the renderings are showing. Commercial success is guaranteed.
^ Commercial success of the tenants inside the building is probably a lock, yes.
"Low Income" housing inside a Gehry project is like a cruel joke. It is like being in Alcatraz.
Sadly, the urbanism of that corner has nothing at all to do with what is best for the people living in the neighborhood day by day. It’s about creating a whiz-bang tourist attraction to draw even more people to the area on the weekends. Orphan is right, this will be a grand commercial success.
FOGAs new building across from the Concert Hall is probably one of the worst pieces to be built in DTLA for a long time. He works better on this smaller scale..
OTOH:
Context is nondescript—boxy, regular, without much expression, without signs of a past, of a region, save for a handful of small buildings before the museum. (I haven't been there—this picture is all I know.) Gehry has nothing to work with. There is no identity to reflect and reinforce. It is the context of no context. At least he stirs things up with something that is expressive, breaks monotony, and calls attention to this corner.
I suspect it is a given, here as elsewhere, like it or not, that such areas will keep going up and keep getting more expensive and will need to be fueled by the wealthy and high-end stores and tony cultural events. At least make the best of the situation. The Gehry project, though largely non-referential, is memorable and exciting, lively and alive, and I'll take it over all that surrounds. This isn't Hudson Yards.
I'm guessing—I also suspect Gehry is happiest when he has no set type or program, but is free to explore space as he wishes, as he does in his cultural buildings. HIs commercial projects to me seem forced, not free expressions but designs that fight against what they are and have to be and still are, orderly boxes with bedrooms and offices.
I do like what he has done with the museum, at least from what I see in the picture above. It makes a mark and calls attention to itself but doesn't overpower those small buildings, which I assume have historical interest. And its mural-like facade presents an image that pulls in the ocean and sets the tone for what I want to say is the Californian ethos.
A Californian, of course, wouldn't use the word "ethos."
“Context is nondescript—boxy, regular, without much expression, without signs of a past, of a region, save for a handful of small buildings before the museum.”
Gary, I think you are wrong about the neighborhood context. There are quite a few large, bland corporate modern buildings there, to be sure, but there are many gems along Ocean in that area. The Hotel Shangri-La on the corner just north of the site is a very charming Art Deco 1930’s building. There are actually several great deco buildings in the adjoining blocks. Just south of the site on Ocean is another, The Georgian.
Thanks, and I like it. As I said, I only know the aerial/rendering picture above, and I'm not seeing much there. Those buildings still look to set the tone, such as it is, and your buildings and the proposed Gehry appear to be exceptions.
A nice Belle Epoqhe example from the French Rivera would have been nice. Climate is the same. But no, got to be different and to hell with the context.
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