Los Angeles
2022 - 2023
57,750 ft2 / 5,400 m2
In a moment of decline in urban foot traffic, this project was tasked with reconsidering what a new urban retail destination might look like. Considering the importance of “experience” as an attractor, and considering the programmatic need to build up, the question became how to attract visitors both to the site, as well as up through its levels.
Recognizing the immersive quality of outdoor sun-drenched plantings as being quintessential to LA, the project draws on the timeless ideal of a “hanging garden” by deploying a mix of indoor and outdoor spaces, hardscapes and greenscapes, and a lyrical, spiraling red stair to draw eyes and feet upward.
Programmatically combining retail, a food hall, an art gallery, restaurant and roof bar, spaces become progressively more lush as one ascends, until arriving at a spectacular hanging garden at the top floor, which serves as an outdoor dining terrace. From there, the roof bar is a sort of high desert garden, with seating and trellises derived from the building’s underlying grid, thereby resolving the geometric process that has begun below.
Formally, the project seeks to engage its more traditional neighbors, and historic urban context, in dialogue, while also reinterpreting the classic urban “loft” building, by providing an expressive facade and circulation system married to expansive and generic floor plates that can be easily repurposed over time.
designers: Adam Sokol; Shaina Yang; Wei-Hung Chen