AVA LA was conceived as a base camp for a wide range of creators and artists. The seven-story development provides multiple indoor and outdoor spaces dedicated to arts, production, and personal wellness on site. Inspired by the materiality and fenestration techniques found throughout the Arts District, the project’s conceptual approach follows the idea of “Buildings on a Building.” The concept draws from a long-standing tradition of commandeering rooftops of industrial buildings for new development atop the expansive warehouse and factory floor plates found throughout the neighborhood.

Located on the eastern edge of Downtown Los Angeles, AVA LA takes inspiration from early 20th century industrial buildings and the neighborhood’s emerging art and street scene. Over the last forty years, artists moved into this former industrial area and brought it to life within closed studios. Today, art has moved from behind-the-scenes to the street, with new storefronts, gallery spaces, and large-scale murals. The new AVA project taps into the neighborhood’s redevelopment and future transformation. The project is located off Alameda, the most important north‐south street in the Arts District, connecting Union Station with South LA and the Port of Los Angeles. The location will be home to Metro’s underground light rail station in the heart of the valley of the Los Angeles River, part of nearly two dozen planned developments in the neighborhood. AVA opens up to this context and the new urban fabric at ground level while reinterpreting the horizontality of Los Angeles through its form.

AVA was designed with multiple courtyards and activities to promote pedestrian interaction with landscaping and retail experiences that are open to the outside. From the street, full height commissioned artwork acts like a beacon to be viewed from Downtown LA. In turn, the landscaped art park leading from Mill Street to the Paseo of AVA is filled with amenities for both the public and the residents of the area.

The project provides 475 live/work units with ground floor retail. 20% of the live/work units are made within Type I construction, allowing for light industrial uses, and all of the units include a minimum of 150 square feet of uninhibited working space. The residential spaces are designed to be minimalist in nature, creating an open live/work framework that features a diverse views looking out onto the city. Board formed concrete and fiber cement paneling reinforce the base of the project as a solid platform for lighter white and black metal panel clad upper buildings to reside. The result is a project that is read as an assemblage versus a single, monolithic building, while simultaneously anchoring itself in the Arts District through materiality and massing.