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THE LATEST. Design Depth Unlike their pre-air-conditioning counterparts, which needed shallow floor plates to admit light and air through operable windows, mid- 20th-century office buildings were designed with deep floor plates. Converting structures with these bulky floor plates to accommodate viable condominiums presents special challenges for developers and their architects, especially since rapidly rising construction costs require the units to be small enough for their buyers to afford. But the desirable location of these buildings, coupled with their lower value due to declining market strength for buildings now rated Class B or C office space, is a powerful incentive to find feasible design solutions. After realizing market success in Los Angeles with two other conversions— the historic, five-narrowwinged Subway Terminal Building into Metro 417 apartments (June 2004, page 26), and the 1100 Wilshire triangular glass tower into unusually shaped condominiums (November/December 2005, page 43)—the same Los Angeles–based development and design team has converted the former Getty Oil headquarters tower, built in 1963 at 3800 Wilshire Boulevard, into the Mercury with 238 condominiums. Because the building is typical of the large-floor-plate problem found in hundreds of mid-20th-century office buildings across the country, and because it lacks the unusual history or geometry of those previous projects, the solutions to these depth problems found by Forest City Residential West and Thomas P. Cox: Architects Inc. (TCA) should be instructive to other developers and architects facing similar challenges. The 22-story Getty tower is 133 feet long by 115 feet wide (41 m by 35 m), yet many of the units needed to be in the 700-squarefoot (65-sq-m) range. Some of the units are over 52 feet (16 m) deep and as narrow as 14 feet (4.2 m) wide. Placing an entry door at one end would give the buyer the feeling of entering a railroad flat. "The solution was to typically pull the 'poche' spaces [bathroom and closet] to the deepest portion of the unit, and try to bounce light as deeply into the unit as possible," explains TCA principal Daniel Gehman. To reach the deepest units, 20- foot- (6-m-) long finger hallways lead to diagonally opposed entry doors embedded nearly midway into pairs of dwellings. This lends privacy to both units and mitigates the perceived depth of their spaces. It also creates a 14-foot- (4.3-m-) square bedroom that seems spacious. A 5-by-10-foot (1.5-by-3-m) bathroom reduces the length along the inside wall. At the other end of the unit, sliding glass doors create a 14-by-5-foot (4.3-by-1.5-m) balcony that opens the unit to the outdoors. As a result, the 14-by-16-foot (4.3-by- 4.9-m) living room seems spacious, especially accompanied by the 12- by-8-foot (3.7-by-2.4-m) L-shaped kitchen that opens onto it. The developer convened focus groups, verifying that the open-floor-plan concept was clearly preferred by younger buyers. In other units, the bathroom is turned so that the 10-foot (3-m) length fills even more of the deep space, and it is paralleled by a 10- by-7-foot (3-by-2.1-m) walk-in closet. Because of the 20-foot- (6-m-) long entry corridors and diagonal entry doors, the second bedrooms often start only midway into the unit, and the door to that bedroom is moved toward the end of the living room. Not only does this give variety to the units, but it also separates the second bedroom from the master bedroom and permits it to act more like a guest suite, because it has its own bathroom, or as a home office off the living room. Another device employed at the Mercury to bring light deeper into the unit—used first by Forest City and TCA at 1100 Wilshire—is to raise the bedroom by about one foot (0.3 m) and separate it from the kitchen by a four-foot- (1.2-m-) high partition against a kitchen counter. This gives the loft-style unit more definition, and a wall of closets on the other side defines the bedroom as separate but more spacious because it shares the views across the living area to the large windows at its perimeter. The depth of the larger units is also mitigated by several of the demising walls being jogged so as to permit oblique views through the unit. In other instances, the entry halls are turned at right angles and laundry areas and other service facilities are placed back-to-back between units in the deeper portions of the units. Corner units present special opportunities because light can enter from two directions and walls can be jogged so as to widen the areas nearest the windows. Some of the corner units are entered at the interior corner, but spaces are open so residents can see straight through to the corner windows. Another device effectively shortens units and solves the problem of how to open office buildings that usually have no outdoor terraces. New balconies are carved into four of the 12 units per floor, giving these smaller units fresh air through large sliding glass doors. In other units, one 3.5-by-7-foot- (1.1-by-2.1- m-) high window per column bay is made operable, but the rest of the windows remain fixed. Connection to parking on the 1.47-acre (0.6-ha) site was another design depth problem because a 527-space parking garage was located in a separate structure. (Parking is allocated at 1.5 spaces per unit, 4.6 per 1,000 square feet [93 sq m] of retail space, and 0.25 per unit for guests.) The architects designed a partially covered walkway bordered by a long, narrow, rectangular pool and a travertine marble wall in a manner that, according to Gehman, alludes to the way Mies van der Rohe modulated space at the Barcelona Pavilion between indoors and outdoors, and screens and transparencies. The pool is filled with pebbles and has a water jet that ripples its surface. Uplights shine through the ripples, creating reflections on the marble wall. All residents enter the Mercury through this front entry sequence rather than through the typical parking garage elevator. As was the case with the Subway Terminal Building and 1100 Wilshire, Forest City Residential West took over the project from a previous developer who was unable to complete it. In each case, Forest City and TCA had to redesign the project to solve design problems. At the Mercury, even though framing had been completed to the eighth floor, units had not been stacked, plumbing vents had not been aligned, and washer/dryers were to have been single-unit, ventless machines placed under the kitchen counter. The new team stacked the floor plans and redesigned the laundry machines as stackable units placed near the bedrooms. Weight also presented a problem. The rooftop was redesigned to become a major outdoor living room roof terrace with a swimming pool, a spa, a fitness center, barbecue pits, and an event lawn. But the structure could not support the weight of a traditional gunite pool, so the developers had a stainlesssteel pool fabricated and lifted to the roof. Units in the $136 million Mercury project, located at the corner of Wilshire and Western boulevards, range in price from $400,000 to more than $1 million for units from 713 to 1,557 square feet (66 to 145 sq m). The bottom two floors contain 23,000 square feet (2,137 sq m) of retail space across the street from a Metro Red Line station and the Wiltern Theatre, a live performance venue. As developers consider the reuse and conversion to housing of mid- 20th-century office buildings and wrestle with the problems of overcoming their large and deep floor plates, the Mercury at 3800 Wilshire could suggest a variety of design and development solutions both to their depth and their hermetically sealed character |
