After more than a decade of planning, L.A. LIVE - a 4 million-square-foot, pedestrian-oriented entertainment and retail district in downtown Los Angeles, CA that sits adjacent to the Staples Center - has become a reality. And at the heart of the six-block development is a striking 54-story tower housing the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Residences and JW Marriott, which features an exterior skin of variegated glass rooted by a stone base. The Pearl Grey quartzitic sandstone from India extends to the interior lobby walls, making for a smooth transition between the indoor and outdoor design.
Designed by Gensler of Los Angeles, the tower features stone that was supplied by Southland Stone USA Inc. of North Hollywood, CA, and fabricated and engineered by SMG Stone of Sun Valley.
“The project is a vertical tower,” said Kapil Malik, AIA, Design Director at Gensler. “We shaped the building as a prism. The tower gets thinner as it rises to the sky. It’s the only tower in LA that can be seen from 360 degrees.
“Each hotel has its own identity and its own drop-off,” Malik continued. “The glass skin is designed as variegated because the program moved horizontally and vertically - each has its own module. JW Marriott is 30 feet and the Ritz is 35 feet.”
Malik went on to explain that four different types of glass were utilized to create the variegation. “It was designed to respond to the program behind it,” he said. “The tower comes to the ground on the base with a pass-through lobby. We chose Indian sandstone for the base.”
According to the architect, sandstone was selected because the design objective was to make it feel like the building rose out of the ground. “The stone was designed as a basketweave - every layer moves in and out,” he said. “As the sun hits the glass, there is a nice pattern on the stone when it hits. The idea was to create texture and pattern with shade and shadow - to give depth to the stone.”
One of the primary reasons the stone was carried inside and outside the tower was because of the expansive size of the building, explained Malik. “We split the lobby as though we were splitting a solid rock,” said the architect. “We brought stone inside the lobby to have continuity.”
The walls of the main lobby are dressed in Pearl Grey sandstone, while the floor consists of three varieties of Chinese granite in shades of white, black and gray. Granite pavers were also employed for the ground floor plaza.