The LA Block

Meeghan Lee & Dennis Dong Yeop Ham

The occupants of a city rely on the essential contents of one. Such essential contents of a city consist of specific spaces that distinguish its function and purpose.

Widely known as the “City Within A City,” the Westin Bonaventure in Downtown, LA is John C. Portman’s most famous portrayal of a city in a single building. As it reflects the regular city, the building holds spaces of dwelling, offices, shops, recreation, parking, infrastructure and other places for leisure. What would be perceived as an outdoor public space is now spatially enclosed as a privatized public space. Infrastructural roads and sidewalks are raised and wrapped around the interior as ramps and bridges. Programmatic volumes morph into different forms as it adjusts to create a centre atrium in which the people will be able to openly gather and habituate.

This project is an approach to densify the city of Los Angeles to its utmost capacity in an organized manner of the block-grid of downtown LA. Mimicking the language of the composition of the Bonaventure, each block of the city has a different interpretation of the “city within a city,” by integrating various buildings of different program and function that exist in the city. As the individual buildings mingle and intersect with each other, figural voids then hold their presence as it acts as the privatized public spaces of a city. Some mini cities at each block may be tight as they situate elbow-to-elbow. These moments create pathways from city to city, as well as bridges and extensions of certain parts of the cities connect each block to each other.

Yes, this limits exposure to the outside to those who occupy these mini cities. However, being a city, these new bodies still give access to fresh air- but within the premises. A new level of density is achieved as each body pulls the population to an area. This area of dense population is then distributed throughout the whole city at each block thus creating a new language of densification. This project is not a multiplication of facilities of quarantine, it is the act of politely densifying an already-dense city to its maximum capacity.

As a contrast to the rectangular office towers that surround the site, the design for this 1,354 guest room convention hotel consists of five low-rise, glass -clad cylindrical towers. The project serves as a unifying centerpiece for the Bunker Hill Area of Los Angeles.

Encompassing an entire city block, the hotel complex features a podium base containing a large ballroom, two junior ballrooms, 28 meeting rooms and an exhibit hall, totalling 121,000 sf of meeting space. Other amenities include restaurants, shops, boutiques, a cafe, and a revolving rooftop cocktail lounge.

Source: www.portmanusa.com