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Studio Gang unveils plans for its first curvy LA tower

United States Architecture News - May 02, 2018 - 03:20   18450 views

Studio Gang unveils plans for its first curvy LA tower

US architecture firm Studio Gang has unveiled plans for its new tower in Los Angeles, featuring curvaceous form with its ascending floor slabs upwards. 

The 26-story tower will be built at 643 North Spring Street in Chinatown and it will the be the first project of the firm built in Los Angeles. The slim and curvy tower will consist of 300 apartment units, 149 hotel rooms and open public space on the terraced roof and the first floor roof stretching towards the edge.

Due to the narrow form of the site, the studio proposes wavy and narrow form not to look like "a building wall" within the city context. The planned tower will rise 270 feet (82,29 meters), or 26 stories, and measure just 55 feet (16,76 meters) wide.

Floor-to-ceiling glazing will wrap the whole building to get fresh air and sunlight in every unit. Transparent balconies will surround the building and mark its wavy form far away.

Hotel guests and building residents will share amenities on landscaped, second, and third-floor terraces. At the street level, 22,000 square feet (2,043 square meters) of public plazas are placed, and the public plazas will be designed by landscape design firm Elysian Landscapes

"The site is at the nexus at a lot of different nodes of development," Studio Gang design principal Weston Walker told Curbed LA. "You never get that feeling of [the building] being a wall," said Jeanne Gang, Founder and Principal of Studio Gang.

Developed by French real estate company Compagnie de Phalsbourg, the new tower will be built in Chinatown where its residents are against to taller building in the neighborhood. Studio Gang will be working with a local firm Creative Space on this project, while the hotel will be operated by European brand MOB Hotel

"Obviously we know there’s some sensitivity" to a taller building, Gang added. But the project "seems to fit in," she explained. The project site at 643 Spring Street, for now, is occupied by pair of low-rise buildings—one of which is the shuttered King Hing Theater.

The plans were already filed for the project and community meetings will be arranged in the coming months. 

Studio Gang also recently unveiled plans for its first condo tower in Brooklyn. Studio Gang, founded by Jeanne Gang, runs three offices in Chicago, New York and San Francisco. Studio Gang's hotly-anticipated project the American Museum Of Natural History Expansion broke ground last year. The firm's other project Solar Carve Tower, located between Manhattan’s High Line park and the Hudson River, has also topped out next to the High Line. 

Top image courtesy of Studio Gang

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