Bjarke Ingles Group (BIG) has received planning permission to build the new 670 Mesquit project in Downtown LA.
Situated at the eastern edge of the Arts District overlooking the LA River, the four-building scheme yields 894 new residential units, a hotel, charter school, and more than 676,000 square feet of office space. Studio-MLA is attached to the project as its landscape designer, delivering a layered connection of terraces and other areas between the former industrial site and riverbank that allows for an active indoor-outdoor lifestyle year-round for its users.
BIG’s founder said he and the design team "asked ourselves if we can renew the arts district by embracing rather than replacing the qualities that have spawned this unique urban culture. We have imagined a hybrid of two unique local typologies: the downtown warehouse and the case-study house."
"Like a flexible framework the project operates on two scales: the big bare bones of the buildings and the human-scale completion for its individual inhabitants," he adds. "The freedom of the warehouse loft meets the individual customization of the stick-built case study house."
Primarily, the project is being marketed as a dynamic and multi-front "reframing" of what was once a cold storage facility. The site's position affords its architecture the ability to address those arriving downtown from East LA a new "gateway." The two tallest new buildings will reach a height of 388 feet, followed by the smaller 314- and 230-foot structures towards the southern end.
Ingels calls it a "major step toward reclaiming and transforming the river bank into a vital new urban landscape that can be enjoyed and appreciated by residents and visitors."
According to the first reports from Urbanize LA, "construction of the project is expected to occur in a single five-year period or in multiple phases over the course of nine years."
It follows the announcement of the updated $2 billion mixed-use Fourth & Central development in October. Also in Southern California, BIG is working to complete the new Robert Day Sciences Center at Claremont McKenna College next fall.
1 Comment
This design has become ominous and ugly. It looks like the average gazillion story flat slab concrete stacks you see in Miami. I guess exposing the concrete and not painting it white in the Miami style somehow makes this project LA Arts District edgy?
The earlier design models and diagrams shown in the photos are so much better.
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