It doesn’t get much more Hollywood than this: LA architect Joey Shimoda is designing the new headquarters for Ametron Electronics, a major supplier of production equipment for the film industry. In a real feat of stagecraft, Shimoda said the 20-story, 218,000 square-foot building takes the inspiration for its form is Ametron owner Fred Rosenthal’s collection of sleek vintage microphones and radios.
A complex of structural systems holds up the various buildings. (Click to Zoom)
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The tower, located in the heart of Hollywood, will be made up of several varied components to provide a variety of uses and to break down the mass. “We didn’t want a boring rectangle,” Shimoda said. “We wanted to create a building that has personality and will be remembered for its shape. We were also interested in creating a something that is not a billboard backdrop,” an all too common problem in Hollywood.
The building will consist of office space and a small Radio and Microphone Museum on the ground floor, parking on the next seven floors, and offices above. The office portion will be clad with a diagonally-braced steel or concrete exterior structure above and a more conventional glass and aluminum curtain wall below. The parking structure will be clad with flat slab concrete with intricate skin treatments.
Shimoda stressed building a humane connection between the building and the street; a rarity in jumbled Hollywood. The project will include a small water moat at the property line with bridges into the storefronts, canopies on both street frontages, and lush street trees and planter buffers. The lobby will include a reflecting pool.
Completion is planned for 2016. The project manager will be Anne Gray, publisher of Balcony Press and Form Magazine, who once worked as facilities director at Paramount Studios.