550 South Hope Street, LA, 1989

550 South Hope Street is a 27 story, 610,000 square foot office building with underground parking for 520 cars.

The building is located on South Hope Street in the setting of Bertram Goodhew's eclectic Los Angeles Public Library of 1926 and George W. Kelham's Georgian revival California Club of 1929. A new commercial building of comparatively large scale was placed into the context of these two social institutions, one of the most public nature and the other of the most private. Through the abstract use of form, scale and materials, an attempt was made to reinforce the civic importance of the Library and public nature of the street while at the same time drawing the California Club into the composition.

Two sculptural volumes are configured around a central slab the same width as the California Club and set perpendicular to it, allowing the two buildings to be read together, framing the symbolically important tower of the Library at the terminus of Hope Street. This reading is reinforced by the building's projecting base which defines the street wall and creates a scalar relationship to the smaller buildings to which it is adjacent. The use of beige and red-orange granites similar in tone to the two adjacent buildings allows the three to be read together as an urban composition. The buildings thus create a new urban scene with abstract means, each one retaining its own stylistic integrity.

Retail functions and a double height lobby are located at the Hope Street level. They are linked by a monumental stair and general erosion of the building's base to a mezzanine court adjacent to the Library terrace. In addition to providing a place of quiet repose remote from the street, the court introduces a new, green pedestrian link to the network already established on the block.

 

elevator door

The Lobby is thought of as a room inserted into the flowing public space of the base of the building, rendered stable by the definition of its bounding surfaces. These surfaces are made of thin layers of travertine and granite arranged in an abstract pattern designed to order the honorific entrance into the building. A curving, illuminated glass ceiling further stabilizes the Lobby and beckons to the passing public at night.

The project was completed in 1992.