Location: Los Angeles, CA
Date: 2022
Category: Commercial

About this Project:

• Scope: Adaptive Reuse, Architecture and Interiors

• Floor Area: 4,371 sf

• Site Area: 5,165 sf

• Rendering: HansonLA

12517 Venice started as a utilitarian shell structure in the shadow of a billboard. A storefront building in the middle of a block of storefront buildings, it blurred into the boulevard fabric and shrank beneath the towering street-sign. It is now both a retreat from the traffic outside and an architectural placard at play with its infrastructural neighbor.

The renovation of 12517 Venice doubled its square-footage, expanding it from a one- to two-story commercial volume. It maintains a flat frame façade that, from the outside, for the public, acts as a conceptual gallery wall or projection screen. The solid surfaces create a mask along the sidewalk, occasionally lifting or splitting to open access to or reveal glimpses of the interior. From the inside, the perimeter walls are the wrapper for a procession of discrete experiences. A sculptural stair, brightly painted to emphasize its geometries, anchors the new second-floor to the original first. The stair climbs to a cathedral hall constructed with a capped-pitch vault. Finished in concrete, the grand room has a quieting sense of mass, its carved weight conveying a protected interiority that contrasts with the lightness of the surrounding building. Space within is flexibly arranged and used for co-working and gathering. The addition culminates with the spilling of the indoor activities into an overlook roof deck with perfect vantage of the street below and the billboards above.