Transit Corridor, City Walk among bid DMJM projects.

DMJM is getting to be the New York Yankees of local architectural firms. With $66 million in local billings Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall is by far the biggest and most active architecture firm in L.A. County - largely reflecting the firm's involvement with a number of mega-projects that go far beyond traditional architecture services.

A large part of the firm's business comes from civil infrastructure engineering projects including development and engineering services for the Alameda Corridor. These services involve, among other things, conducting highway and railroad capacity studies, evaluating alternative routes and designs and preparing environmental reports.

DMJM provided a similar array of services for the recently completed Pier 300 expansion program in the Port of L.A.

"We have a depth of resources, people and facilities, which makes us very well-suited to tackle these large assignments," said Robert Newsom, the firm's senior vice president. "You are not going to hire us to design your kitchen, even though we do a large number of smaller projects as well."

Another one of DMJM's big-scale local projects is Universal CityWalk, which the firm has been involved with since 1986. Currently it is working on the renovation of the EastWalk, an extension of the shopping and entertainment center.

It also designed the new Emergency Command Control Communications System of the LAPD, better known as the 911 centers. These are two identical structures, one downtown and one in the San Fernando Valley, which will house the emergency calls and dispatching operations for all of L.A. The two buildings are designed so that if one of them were to be knocked out by a major disaster, the other one would take over and provide all required services independently.

As part of that project, DMJM had to design facilities that would be able to withstand a massive earthquake. The design includes, among other things, a foundation of rubber/stainless steel isolators and pneumatic restraints, which allow the structures to move with the seismic waves rather than to resist them.

Also in 1998, DMJM finished the renovation of 10100 Santa Monica Blvd., a 25-story office building in Century City. The assignment was to redesign the building's entrance, lobby and plaza to make it more pedestrian-oriented. Originally built in the early 1970s, when Century City was conceived as an "auto-topia," access to the building was almost exclusively by means of the parking garage.

DMJM conceived of several ways to change the building's emphasis toward pedestrian traffic - including the addition of an entrance on Santa Monica Boulevard and the redesign of the lobby and rear,

The work on 10100 Santa Monica illustrates DMJM's moves into interior design work as well as architecture. Four years ago, the firm added Richard Keating and Lauren Rottet, a prominent office building architect and a renowned interior designer, respectively. Although Keating left last year, Rottet remains to head the merged architecture and interior design division together with Paul Danna, who joined the firm from Helmutt Obata + Kassabaum Inc.

DMJM is fully owned subsidiary of AECOM Technology Corp., one of the largest privately owned companies in Los Angeles.

MOST ACTIVE ARCHITECTURE FIRM

Winner

DANIEL, MANN, JOHNSON & MENDENHALL Los Angeles

Runners Up

GENSLER San Francisco

LEE BURKHART LIU INC. Santa Monica