Hollywood, California
Sunset-Gordon Tower is a dense mixed-use residential, office and retail development located on Sunset Boulevard in central Hollywood, across the street from a major motion film and television studio.
Conceived to be a model for sustainable urban in-fill development, every aspect of the project, from the site selection to the exterior materials, has been considered in order to achieve the goal of a “Platinum” rating from the United States Green Building Council. The southwest corner of the 1.6 acre site is occupied by a historic one-story stucco building that was built to house the first radio broadcast studio in Hollywood. In keeping with the sustainable goals of the project, this building is being restored for a retail use and integrated into the massing of the new development.
The project includes 124 condominium units, 10,000 square feet of street-level retail, 40,000 square feet of office space and parking for 360 cars. The varied program was driven by the request of the area’s city council member and the local community groups to provide more work-force housing for the employees of nearby film and TV production companies, as well as “creative” office space to house these companies. It is imaginable that residents of the building could simply commute to work by taking an elevator a few floors down to their office.
The development configuration is a vertically stacked arrangement of three elements: The existing historic building with new adjacent retail, a four-story podium and a nine-story tower. The podium provides five levels of above-grade parking that is wrapped with program uses including retail, town homes and office space. In order to reduce heat gain and storm water runoff, the top of the podium is lushly landscaped and provides a series of outdoor communal spaces for the residents, including a swimming pool, spa and Tai Chi garden. The tower is a shifted bar configuration that contains a mix of one and two-bedroom units and penthouse units on the top floor.
In contrast to the solidity of the existing building, the new retail facing Sunset Boulevard is rendered as a horizontal glass volume, but with the same scale and massing of its historic neighbor. Above the ground floor retail and existing building, a one-story high band of translucent channel glass is recessed from the building face to conceal a level of parking and to provide a visual separation between the ground floor uses and the two office levels above. The office levels are glass band wrapped in a metal frame and faced with a horizontal sun-screen system. A large portal reveals an outdoor porch at each office level that aligns with the entry of the historic building below. Each floor level of residential tower above is expressed and the façade is activated by a series of vertical movable sunscreen panels mounted on tracks of the terrace of each unit. According to the personal desires of the residents, the sunscreen panels can be moved to different positions for each unit, creating a varied and functional effect on the façade.