CULVER CITY COLONY.

Energized by a formal and material vigour, Eric Owen Moss's most recent building in Culver City extends his series of lively, humane work spaces.

This headquarters for a digital film and graphic design company is the latest in Eric Owen Moss's impressive series of buildings in Culver City, a moribund industrial zone in central Los Angeles. For at least 10 years, Moss, and his developer patrons Fred and Laurie Samitaur Smith, have been recolonizing and reconfiguring the shells of redundant warehouse buildings to provide flexible office and studio spaces for media companies (AR September 1992 and April 1997). Moss's disjointed geometries and lusty approach to materials make for buildings with undeniable presence, but his quirkily cannibalized warehouses also embody a wider civic mandate, suggesting visionary alternative strategies for urban redevelopment.

Here, unlike previous projects, most existing ancillary structures have been removed, creating a virtual tabula rasa. The new building occupies the north part of the plot, with the remaining area given over to the inevitable Californian parking lot. All that has been kept of the original warehouse is a brick wall and regimented rows of double bow-string timber trusses. These elements have been preserved and integrated into the new building.

A four-storey steel frame of wide flange beams and tubular columns was constructed over the lines of trusses which now extend beyond the south edge of the building. Somewhat surreally, the randomly truncated ends of the bowstrings protrude beyond the grey stucco walls, poised in space like petrified archaeological remains. In places, the trusses support metal sun screens that shield larger areas of glazing. Overlapping timber and steel structures give the building an extemporized, gutsy tectonic quality. The weathered timber structure is also visible from inside, arching through the spaces like a totemic historic presence.

New walls run parallel to the trusses. The main south wall defines the building perimeter and overlooks the parking lot; a further pair of internal walls enclose a spinal circulation corridor and a fourth terminates the block on the north side. A quartet of smaller office spaces are placed at intervals along the north wall. On the south elevation the skewed cylinder of the entrance hall tilts and intersects with the grid of walls, frames, trusses and roof. It extends through the entrance lobby to bulge suggestively into the first floor conference room. The entrance hall is a soaring, set-piece collision of volumes and textures, that sets the slightly frenetic tone for the rest of the building. More wilful geometric fracturing occurs at the west end of the lobby, where a tilted cube housing another conference room hangs perilously off the elevation. Cylinder and cube are separated by the stark presence of a tall lift shaft clad in dark grey blocks.

Bound together by the long spinal corridor, the four floors of work spaces are divided into types -- open plan, semi-enclosed and cellular -- generating variety and sense of territory. Within these conventional forms of layout, Moss has a knack of creating nooks and crannies that function as smaller, humanly scaled places for working, thinking and relaxing. At the building's east end, for instance, the orthogonal block is again twisted and stretched to create small terraces outside the offices. The upper floor is pulled back to form a south-facing roof terrace with views over the industrial detritus of Culver City. Like a stage set, the building becomes an adaptable armature for events, capable of accommodating corporate muscle and individual creativity. It is a brave move that adds a much needed shot of vigour to a desolate part of LA, worlds away from the city's slick, sanitized CBD.

Architect

Eric Owen Moss 

Project team

Eric Owen Moss, Jay Vanos, Dennis Ige, John Bencher, Todd Conversano, Scott M. Nakao

Structural engineer

Kurily Szymanski Tchirkow

Mechanical engineer

Fruchtman & Associates

Photographs

John Edward Linden

1. The building occupies a plot in the moribund industrial zone of Culver City. Existing structures on the site were cleared to make way for Moss's striking new intervention.

2. Computer generated cut-away drawing showing the relationship of spine corridor to cellular and open plan office spaces.

3. Remnants of original bowstring trusses are incorporated into the new building. Walls are fractured to create small balcony spaces.

4. Moss's formal and material exuberance is especially apparent around the entrance on the main south elevation. The perilously tilting cube houses a conference room.

5. Computer generated sectional perspective through the entrance hail.

6. The interior reflects the building's gutsy, expressive tectonic quality.

7. Entrance hall. Set against crisp new materials, the old trusses are like archaeological fragments, a reminder of the building's past.

8. The main stair wraps around the lift core.

9. One of the conference spaces, surreally penetrated by the trusses. Moss aims to create spatial variety and a sense of territory.