Description
The husband-and-wife investor team Frederick and Laurie Samitaur-Smith and the architect Eric Owen Moss have been working for some ten years on a radical renewal of the Hayden Tract, an industrial wasteland in Culver City. The block is part of a large-scale urban planning vision by the Smiths and Moss, called Conjunctive Points. It provides for a step-by-step conversion of the entire city district.
The strategy is based on recurrent interventions in the form of conversions and additions to unused warehouse buildings to turn them into office buildings that then serve to attract further developments. At the centre is the Palindrome, a park-like, programmatically consolidated pedestrian zone functioning as a backbone, which is to become an urban centre. The Palindrome and the office buildings, strewn in an apparently casual fashion across the desolate area, are without exception privately financed speculative projects.
The expressive form of Stealth, the newest building in Hayden Tract, is reminiscent of the jet fighter of the same name. The building, developing from a solid wall running parallel to Hayden Avenue, marks the entrance to the large courtyard around which are grouped the other buildings, “Slash and Backslash,” “The Umbrella” and “Pterodactyl.” Two large openings in the wall give access to the courtyard and create a direct link to the neighbouring building. A cavity in the ground left by the removal of contaminated soil was used to create a garden, forming an extension to the event venue stage in the adjacent building. The ground was kept clear apart from the lobby and the service core; the office building spans over this area.
The centrally placed entrance divides the building into two office wings with a total of three rental units, their sizes kept within manageable limits, suitable for small companies or start-ups. Both office wings are accessed via external bridges at the second and third floors. The triangular section at one end of the building is smoothly transformed over the building’s length to become rectangular at the other end and hence generates a variety of interior and exterior spaces. For the future tenants, a row of cell-like offices for concentrated work along the courtyard wall is planned. An open communication zone in front of it provides sufficient facilities for team activities.
The unusual, often distorted geometries that Eric Owen Moss uses in his architecture are considered to be both aggressive and narrative. Representing a hot address, they promote the corporate image of design, film and high-tech companies. The architecture contributes to the transformation of a district and plays an important role in the investors’ project, which is successful on multiple levels.
Drawings
Site plan
Third floor
Fourth floor
Sections
Hayden Avenue elevation
Courtyard elevation
Photos
With its hybrid architecture, expressive forms and not least, the urban quality generated by the campus-like character of the block’s interior, the 57-acre district has become ‘the’ address for people in the media business
The mild Californian climate allows year-round use of access areas open to the outside. They provide space for spontaneous or informal meetings
Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.