Los Angeles–based La Terra Development and Urban Architecture Lab are working to bring a combined 246 apartments and 23,300 square feet of retail to two sites adjacent to Barnsdall Art Park—home of the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Hollyhock House—in L.A.’s Los Feliz neighborhood. Dubbed Los Feliz I and Los Feliz II and located at 4850 and 4900 Hollywood Boulevard, respectively, the two apartment complexes are designed to preserve views from the street toward the Hollyhock House, according to community preferences for neighborhood development. Renderings released by the developer show a pair of contemporary structures that feature a mix of vertically- and horizontally-oriented bands of projecting window assemblies, with the 4850 structure stepping back as it rises, creating rooftop terraces along lower sections. This structure contains a wide street frontage along Hollywood Boulevard that is occupied by storefronts and features a second-level courtyard, as well. The 4850 project aims to bring 96 apartments and 9,500 square feet of retail to the area, while the larger 4900 project will contain 150 units and 13,800 square feet of retail uses.  The 4900 proposal, on the other hand, is articulated as a more conventional apartment block with a solid wall of repeating window bays and projecting balconies running the length of Hollywood Boulevard. Located just a few blocks from the Vermont-Sunset stop on the Red Line subway, the projects are also being marketed by the developers as having commanding views of the Hollyhock House, the Griffith Observatory, and the Hollywood Sign. The twin developments join a growing list of medium-density projects that are on the way to the transit-adjacent area, including a trio of similarly-massed apartments headed for Sunset Junction, a 202-unit complex from Killefer Flammang Architects, and a 96-unit project by architecture firm KTGY. The La Terra projects are currently under development, but a timeline has not been released for either project, Urbanize.la reports. For more information, see the La Terra Development website.

The Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) has been on an expansion tear in recent years. Following the announcement of a rail connection from Los Angeles to the airport, an accompanying transit hub, and a super jumbo airplane-oriented concourse expansion, a $336 million contract has been awarded to build three new terminal cores for the airport’s forthcoming people mover. As part of the terminal extension plan, Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), the body responsible for overseeing LAX and the Van Nuys Airports, gave their final approval for a $336 million funding package on January 19^th. That money will go to Dallas, Texas-based Austin Commercial Inc., who have a five-year design-build contract with LAWA to build out three new terminal cores for the Automated People Mover (APM), as well as the surrounding elevators, escalators and walkways. All three cores are shooting for LEED Silver Certification. The new Terminal Core Project will see the construction of two cores between the existing Terminals 5 and 6 and the Tom Bradley International Terminal, and one at Terminal 7. According to LAWA, the three new cores will join another four being built privately, by American Airlines for Terminals 4 and 5, Delta Air Lines for Terminals 2 and 3, and Southwest Airlines for Terminal 1. Phase one of the Terminal Core Project will begin in the second half of 2018 and involve preliminary design. Construction will begin in phase two, which is expected to run from 2019 to 2021. The $2.7-billion people mover project is just one part of the greater $5.5-billion Landside Access Modernization Program (LAMP), a modernization initiative meant to improve connectivity across the LAX. Besides pushing guests around the airport in a loop, the people mover will eventually connect with the forthcoming Crenshaw and Green lines once the $600 million Airport Metro Connector 96th Street Station is complete. The people mover is expected to run every two minutes, all day every day, for free, and eventually hit six stations around the LAX. LAX is the fourth busiest airport in the world and second in the United States, and the upgrades are long overdue. Corgan and Gensler have teamed up to design the $1.6-billion concourse expansion, which will hold an additional 12 gates and an 85,000-square-foot baggage area when it’s finished. Once LAMP is complete in 2023, the LAX should seamlessly connect with the satellite gates and the city proper through mass transit.

With the housing market tightening, and homes by big–name architects commanding a 5 to 10 percent premium over comparable buildings, both homeowners and prospective buyers are turning to architectural historians to tie their houses to iconic designers. As The Wall Street Journal notes, the practice isn’t without merit. A post-purchase debunking of a house sold on the merits of its architect can wipe out the building’s value, akin to a forged artwork. Even "new" homes by Frank Lloyd Wright, an architect whose projects have been catalogued in extreme detail by Chicago’s Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy (FLWBC), still surface regularly. William Allin Storrer, a Wright historian, explained the appeal of marketing a home as one designed by Wright to the WSJ. “It maybe raises a building’s value by a factor of five or more. A $160,000 home would be worth $1.5 million if it was by Wright.” The FLWBC and other preservation groups have tried to thoroughly vet the claims that come their way, as the sale of a Wright-designed home often makes the news. The circular Normal Lykes House in Phoenix, Arizona, was designed by Wright in 1959 shortly before his death, and has been written about extensively in the last few weeks after it was put up for sale. Los Angeles County in particular is rife with single-family homes that have dubious architectural pedigrees. Paul Revere Williams, a Los Angeles native and the first African American to gain admittance to the American Institute of Architects, and Julia Morgan, the first woman architect licensed in California, built homes throughout the state, but their work has not been extensively catalogued. As homeowners reach out to the historians and non-profit groups to verify their claims, any newly discovered buildings would help flesh out the canon of these architects’ work. If those claims aren't possible to prove, then as the The Wall Street Journal Reports, brokers will often list the home as "in the style of" one of these architects. Putting in extra effort to determine a home’s architectural authenticity is especially necessary to help protect consumers, as brokers and sellers attempt to make use of the added value that these labels can bring. For instance, it’s unlikely that Paul Rudolph, who was known for his brutalist projects, would have designed a sprawling estate with teal terraced roofs and a helipad.

While the popular image of Los Angeles is often that of Bel Air mansions and ocean-side surf towns, the heart of the city is more accurately characterized by long rows of small single-family bungalows. When L.A.-based Sharif, Lynch: Architecture took on a project to transform one of these ubiquitous structures into a multigenerational home, the firm looked to the ideas of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, such as "ugly and ordinary" from Learning from Las Vegas, to guide the nature of the project. "I suppose it’s a paradox—wanting the house to both appear as a thing and disappear at the same time—to be self-consciously un-self-conscious," explained Mohamed Sharif, partner at Sharif, Lynch: Architecture, about the project’s balance of design and restraint. The 2,500-square-foot, four-bedroom home in the quiet Mar Vista neighborhood started out as a typical bungalow. By removing the rear of the home, and building a new two-story "L" addition, the project is able to accommodate a completely new lifestyle. The house now accommodates a family with three sons, ranging in age from pre-K to high school, and a mother-in-law flat. The addition also provided a chance to brighten and integrate the interior, which like most California bungalows can be dark with small spaces. With an eye on a tight budget, spaces are adorned in mostly off-the-shelf details, and a clean white palette is used throughout. Rather than focusing on expensive materials and finishes, the firm let the large architectural moves become the driving force behind decisions. Each decision was made with light, fresh air, and a connection to the large outdoor patio in mind. The position and size of the windows, in particular, provide delineation among all of the spaces. "The relationship between the two realms is the spatial engine of the house," said Sharif. "Axially placed openings provide framed views that give the spatial sequence a sense of hierarchy, while diagonally placed openings set up successions of the incidental, of episodes that activate deeper peripheral and lateral perception of the broader context.” Sharif, Lynch’s addition exudes Southern California; with its sun-worshiping interior and its simple bungalow front, the home transcends its original typology, while maintaining its classic charm.

Hollywood legend has it that Charlie Chaplin perfected his characteristic splayed-foot waddle by pacing up and down Los Angeles’s hilly Baxter Street. The hill rises at a harsh 32 percent grade on both sides of its slopes, making it one of the steepest urban inclines in the nation. Perched partway up is a stark rhomboid-shaped white and gray home with a particular gait of its own. The 2,400-square-foot residence was recently completed by Optimist Design, a studio run by German-born production designer Tino Schaedler. The home—conceived by Schaedler and artist Pia Habekost for their growing family—came into being after the couple had spent years living in a landlocked loft in L.A’s Arts District; their only outdoor access was a shared rooftop. “We wanted to live in a different way,” Schaedler said. “I wanted to create an area where I could lie down and read with a view to outside.” In some ways, the big-windowed abode is a prototypical Los Angeles hillside home. Its stick-frame construction and three-level organization stand out as hallmarks of the vernacular style; a two-car garage and a spare room that Habekost utilizes as a studio occupy the first floor. The building’s main floor above, however, contains more remarkable spaces, including the home’s indoor-outdoor terrace and living room. “The view is really beautiful—it was clear to me that I wanted to orient everything toward that beautiful sunset,” Schaedler explained as he described the terrace, which occupies approximately half of the second level’s floor plate. The 16-by-51-foot band is capped on one end by a wading pool and palm tree–studded courtyard. Roughly two-thirds of the way down the terrace, a section of the roof wraps over it, creating an outdoor extension of the home’s interior living room, which connects to the patio via a monolithic glass pocket door. Anchored by a built-in pizza oven, the patio is also populated by built-in benches, potted plants, and bent-metal-tube furniture. The indoor-outdoor space is clad along its eastern exposure by perforated metal panels designed to provide privacy while still allowing the residents to see out over the hillside. An overhead threshold protrudes from the main building to meet the perforated metal wall, creating a view frame. Back inside the house, the dramatic living room—also oriented outward over the hill—is sandwiched between the terrace and a minimalist kitchen that features graphite-stained paneling that can slide closed, stowing away kitchen clutter. A stainless-steel bar counter separates the cooking area from the living room, where a pair of cats take up residence on a rumpled leather sofa. The home’s floors are made up of custom tongue-and-groove flooring, crafted by a local mill, while one of the living room walls is stacked entirely with books, its weighty shelves lined with integrated LED lights that, at night, “adjust to whatever vibe we want to set,” as Schaedler tells it.

With their recent designs for the Los Angeles offices of international media company Hungry Man Productions, architects FreelandBuck explored the decorative potential of the average office cubicle with whimsy and explosive exuberance. The New York City– and Los Angeles–based architects renovated the interior of an existing 8,000-square-foot warehouse structure in L.A., upending the traditional office layout and utilizing abstracted decorative molding profiles as cladding for cubicle walls. The effort was fueled by an adventurous client that wanted a “dynamic and lighthearted working environment.” That desire resulted in a quizzical collection of stacked cubicles—each one turned askew—organized around a collection of shared open spaces. David Freeland, principal at FreelandBuck, explained that the firm set out to deconstruct the prototypical office and to “engage office culture in a way that makes it not mundane or rudimentary.” In plan, it looks rather chaotic, a byproduct of the firm’s playful massing approach that conceals a finely tuned organizational scheme designed to facilitate the musical chairs–style teamwork approach Hungry Man promotes. The offices are used for everything from client meetings to production projects and even casting calls and photo shoots, circumstances that require the spaces to function as a casual backdrop and formal business environment all at once. As a response, the plan is broken up into several zones: a clustered private office pod near the entrance, a dining and meeting core in a far corner, and an open-office work area in another, capped by a mezzanine filled with more private offices. After every few steps, the shifting and patterned cubicles create an entirely new and different view, framing recognizable, but ambiguous, glimpses of other office areas. The cubicles stack in certain places to create thresholds, resulting in casual indoor rooms lit by soft skylights above. They are also meant to be decorative and act as display cases for Hungry Man’s extensive collection of legacy props. The cubicles are wrapped in MDF cladding produced by a line-based CNC mill and fabricated locally to create a “fantastically inexpensive” finishing material that, for the architects, approximates the “roundness and supple depth” of a line drawing. “We wanted to make a playful connection to the office cube as a fundamental unit of typical office space,” Freeland explained. “Part of breaking loose from the conventional associations of ‘office cubicle’ was to use it for different purposes and organize it in different ways.”

An eagle-eyed preservationist has sounded the alarm over a renovation of the atrium of the Wells Fargo Center on Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, designed by noted modernist landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. Envisioned as a “an urban, indoor Garden of Eden,” the publicly-accessible courtyard was the only atrium that Halprin designed.

Public art & landscape preservation alert! Immediate threat to Lawrence Halprin’s Wells Fargo Atrium on Bunker Hill. Robert Graham’s nudes are already gone. https://t.co/lm1Ul1Q2Td@TCLFdotORG @LAConservancy @AplusD_LA #DTLA #thisplacematters pic.twitter.com/jLRuQOXV8E

— Esotouric's Secret Los Angeles (@esotouric) December 21, 2017

Halprin’s original design for the atrium called for a network of fountains, each featuring their own sculpture, that fed constantly running waterways arranged in geometric patterns, which generated a pleasant background noise. As a passerby noted on Twitter yesterday, the contemporary statues by sculptors Robert Graham, Joan Miro, and Jean Dubuffet have been removed, and the runnels have been drained. After asking around, the original Twitter poster discovered that the area was being remodeled. The atrium sits within the Wells Fargo Center, an office building designed by SOM and completed in 1983. The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) notes that although this space was often underutilized by the public, Wells Fargo Center staff had up until this point kept the atrium well maintained. TCLF has been a vocal proponent of cataloguing and preserving Halprin’s work, and have organized and curated the The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin exhibition currently running at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles until the end of the year. AN will update this story once we have more information on whether Halprin’s design, or the nude sculptures, have been removed permanently.

Fans of the film 500 Days of Summer will fondly remember Angels Knoll, a peaceful sloped park overlooking the western edge of Downtown Los Angeles, just south of the Angels Flight funicular. That green sadly closed back in 2013, and yesterday, L.A. City Council voted to sell the 2.24 acre property, known in marketing speak as Angels Landing, and in legislative speak as Bunker Hill Parcel  Y-1, to developer Angels Landing Partners (ALP) for about $50 million. ALP, a partnership between MacFarlane Partners, the Peebles Corporation, and Claridge Properties, along with Handel Architects and Olin, beat out the other two finalists, including a more expressive scheme by Onni Group and Stanley Saitowitz, and another design by Angels Landing Development Partners (ALDP), led by developer Lowe Enterprises in collaboration with Cisneros Miramontes, Gensler, and Relm Studio. ALP and Handel Architects now plan to build a 1.27-million-square-foot mixed-use development at 361 South Hill Street that includes two towers connected via a shared podium. The 88- and 24-story towers would include residential, hotel, restaurant, and retail spaces, as well as a home for the Los Angeles Academy of Arts and Enterprise. The project would also include open spaces by Olin, including a 13,700-square-foot plaza and a 25,400-square-foot public terrace. Renderings of the taller tower reveal a tapered structure skinned in horizontal bands of glazing, with a second layer of varied vertical glazing. The shorter mass would be similarly clad, connected via a raised bridge. Their central plaza would step down to the corner of Hill and 4^th Streets, covered in vegetation. ALS plans to spend about $1.2 billion on the complex. Of course, approvals still need to be obtained, but if all goes according to plan, construction is expected to be complete by 2024.

While William Pereira’s Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) may soon face the wrecking ball in favor of Peter Zumthor’s tar-inspired blob, the Los Angeles Conservancy is trying to ensure that another iconic Pereira building remains. On Monday, the Conservancy filed an application to landmark Pereira and Luckman’s Television City, an International Style icon at the corner of Beverly and Fairfax. CBS is reportedly considering a sale of the site, which brokers have valued at anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion. Built in 1952, Television City was one of the first complexes constructed specifically for television production and broadcasting. Containing sound stages, studios, editing rooms, offices, and rehearsal halls, its rectangular volumes are clad in black and white walls of glass and stucco, with red accents. The complex has hosted The Carol Burnett Show, All in the Family, and The Ed Sullivan Show, and is currently home to The Price Is Right and The Late Late Show with James Corden. Landmark designation would require preservation design review and approval through the city’s Office of Historic Resources to guide any redevelopment and adaptive reuse of the campus, including new infill construction.

2017 Best of Design Award for Facade United States Courthouse - Los Angeles Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Location: Los Angeles, California

The new United States Courthouse, a LEED Platinum structure, meets its energy target of 35kBTU/GSF annual consumption through a variety of sustainable design features. The most visible is the facade—a solution that gracefully responds to the solar orientation of the site. A key challenge was to manage intense sun exposure from the east and west while maintaining the building’s alignment with the street grid. The pleated facade design incorporates shaded panels in east- and west-facing pleats to minimize solar thermal gain, and transparent glass panels in north- and south-facing pleats to maximize natural daylight inside the courthouse. This reduces annual solar radiation load and central plant load while lending visual dimension to the facade.

"At a time when much design effort is confined to the envelope, this project stands out for its intelligence in aligning environmental performance with architectural goals across various scales." —Eric Bunge, principal, nARCHITECTS (juror) Owner: General Services Administration General Contractor: Clark Construction Group Facade Contractor: Benson Industries Blast Engineering: Applied Research Associates Inc. Mechanical and Electrical Engineering: Syska Hennessy Group Inc.   Honorable Mention Project: University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, Kate Tiedemann College of Business Architect: ikon .5 architects, Harvard Jolly Architects Location: St. Petersburg, Florida Inspired by the indigenous coral stone of Tampa Bay, the 68,000-square-foot Tiedemann College of Business is conceived as a porous container. The most unique feature of the building is its glass facade: The composition consists of a ceramic fritted first pane that is double-run with two tones of a circular pattern and a mirrored second pane that allows views out while reflecting the first pane’s patterned coating.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is preparing to announce a final slate of projects for his "28 by 28" initiative before the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (Metro) board of directors this week. Garcetti’s effort aims to complete 28 regional transit projects before Los Angeles hosts the summer Olympics in 2028. The proposal includes a collection of projects already planned under a recently passed transportation funding ballot initiative called Measure M, urbanize.LA reports. Measure M is slated to bring $860 million per year to regional transit projects that Metro will utilize to diversify regional transportation options. According to a plan posted to the Metro website, Garcetti’s initiative includes 16 projects planned under Measure M and a previous transit measure. These projects include light rail and bus rapid transit (BRT) expansions across the region, as well as several highway improvement and widening efforts. The plan calls for expanding six light rail lines, which includes the completion of new light rail lines to Crenshaw in South Los Angeles, Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley, and Santa Ana in the southeast. Also included are a slew of regional BRT projects in the northern San Fernando Valley along Vermont Avenue and through Glendale. The collected projects have the potential to reshape the region’s urban geography, as evidenced by the explosion of transit-oriented development proposed along the recently extended Expo light rail line in West Los Angeles. The areas around the first phase of the Purple Line subway extension are already booming with high-density, mixed-use developments. Further information on the 28 by 28 plan is forthcoming. See the Metro website for the official Measure M transit expansion roll-out schedule. 

Architects Gensler and Legendary Development have revealed renderings for a long-anticipated 11-story development on an existing L-shaped parking lot surrounding the A+D Museum in Downtown Los Angeles. The proposed tower will be located at 4th and Hewitt Streets in L.A.’s booming Arts District and will contain up to 255,000 square feet of office spaces, 15,000 square feet of ground floor retail uses, 11,000 square feet of common areas, and 538 parking stalls. The 8,950-square-foot A+D Museum is to remain, though it will shrink to 7,800 square feet, according to a preliminary Environmental Impact Report (EIR). Rios Clementi Hale is performing landscape architecture services for the project, Urbanize.LA reports. The renderings were first published by Curbed LA. The development, according to the renderings, is designed to approximate the Arts District’s industrial vernacular aesthetic and will feature four lower levels designed to look like surrounding late nineteenth century factory buildings. These levels come complete with divided light, factory-style windows and exposed concrete frame elements. The lower portion of the building will be topped by a seven-story glass curtain wall–clad building mass that is highlighted on various corners by bump-out volumes and inset balcony spaces. The complex will overlook the existing A+D Museum and will be accessed from a courtyard currently adjacent to the museum. The project comes as the areas around the A+D Museum and adjacent Southern California Institute of Architecture campus see an increase in office-containing projects. Several former industrial complexes—including an old Coca Cola syrup factory and a defunct Maxwell House Coffee roastery—are being adapted and expanded as developers work to meet growing demand for office space in the district. Other areas of the neighborhood are seeing a boom in residential and mixed-use development, as well. The Draft EIR indicates that the project team expects to break ground on the project in 2019, with completion scheduled for 2021.