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New renderings revealed for crooked, pixelated tower in Los Angeles

Jogging Around

New renderings revealed for crooked, pixelated tower in Los Angeles

In recently-revealed renderings, adam sokol architecture practice (asap/) and developer Downtown Management have revealed a new, slanted look for a long-delayed mixed-use residential tower project proposed for Los Angeles’s historic core. The 45-story tower, located at 525 South Spring Street, has been under design for several years by several different firms, including a recent 2015 proposal from L.A.-based Steinberg. Though the new proposal is strikingly different in terms of its form, asap/’s involvement has not changed the building’s program since the Steinberg scheme.

The new proposal calls for 360 residential units and 25,000 square feet of retail space to be contained within a canted tower that starts on a square-shaped base and jogs to the south as it rises. Once the tower’s height surpasses those of the surrounding historic buildings, the mass of the structure shifts inwardly from the cornice line, ultimately rising to meet a square-shaped tower block. The mass rises straight up from there to the tower’s flat-topped apex. The renderings also depict a tower clad in variously-sized panels of multi-tone blue glass. The treatment starts off dark and vertically-oriented at the base, where storefronts and the entry to a garage podium are located. The podium level contains a terraced public space located above the garage entry that is shaded by the slanted structure above. Beyond the podium level, the panels take on a more pixelated motif while also becoming lighter in color as the tower rises in height. In a press release, asap/ described the cladding approach as an attempt to “exploit the materiality of glass in novel ways by deploying it to maximize its sense of mass and density.”

The project comes as L.A.’s historic core sees an increase in both wholly new structures and renovations to existing buildings. asap/ is also working on a faceted hotel tower located one block south of the 525 South Spring Street site. A timeline for the 525 South Spring Street project has not been announced.


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