Location: Los Angeles, CA
Date: 2022
Category: Mixed-Use

About this Project:

• Scope: Architects and Interior Architects

• 159 Live Work Units

• 23,380 sf of Art and Production Space and Underground Parking

• Renderings: Kink Studio 

676 Mateo is a serendipitous site in Los Angeles’ Arts District. Its location makes it simultaneously a draw into and a center of the neighborhood. It spans the depth of a block, giving it two public faces, each with a distinct character. To the west, it sits at the terminus of a long view into downtown and of the dead-end of Industrial into Mateo Streets. To the east, it is a link within the increasingly dense line of midrise urban volumes of Imperial Street.

The HansonLA project at 676 Mateo materializes these chances of place in three distinct, but conversational architectures that make-up a single mixed-use complex containing nearly 24,000 square feet of arts and production space and 159 live-work units. On the western side, it is a beacon. A shiny sculptural form inspired by Jeff Koons’ public art, the seemingly freestanding tower perches above the ground on a lone column. Dubbed the “Puppydog,” it both disguises and distinguishes its residential function with organic apertures. These large, rounded windows and balcony overlooks convey gallery status on the individualized apartments onto which they open. On the eastern side, the structure is no less sculpted, but this time in reference to more modernist or minimalist masters. An almost cube, it is organized in a regular grid of windows accented by select extensions of the façade into balconies. Clad in satin black, with a chrome, glass, and opalescent skirt, it is the project’s fashion statement. The west and the east, then, are stitched by the still simpler geometries of a long bar, turned  L-building. Understated from the exterior, it bounds and slips under its more prominent neighbors and hugs multi-level interior courtyards that draw light, nature, and activity into the interiors.