Friday, July 19, 2013, by Adrian Glick Kudler
Last week, Santa Monica dropped major news that they’d hired starchitect Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA to design its first major project in Los Angeles–a huge multi-use development on a site at Fourth and Arizona. Now OMA (working with Van Tilburg, Banvard & Soderbergh and landscape architects OLIN) has revealed these juicy renderings of the design, which the selection panel said “delivers iconic architecture from all elevations, as well as a highlyflexible interior space design that could most easily accommodate potential design modifications.” And yoga. The design will definitely accommodate yoga.
The Plaza at Santa Monica project will include office space “designed to create a hub for the growing tech industry” (Silicon Beach Is a Thing), a 225-room boutique hotel “with unobstructed views of the city, beach and mountains,” a ground-level plaza, elevated terraces, a cultural venue “embedded at the heart of the building, with street level access and adedicated park,” and “pedestrian improvements such as wide sidewalks, bike lanes, landscaping, street furniture and additional public parking.”
The city’s expected to formalize the agreement at the end of August; after that, public outreach begins, and then there everything should be finalized sometime in 2014.