Archinect - News

SPF:a's new Obama Sports Complex is inaugurated in Los Angeles

2022-06-29T17:24:00-04:00

It’s opening day for SPF:architects’ new Michelle and Barack Obama Sports Complex in Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills neighborhood. The new development replaces the old 29-acre Rancho Cienega Sports Complex and was developed in conjunction with Buro Happold and Hood Design Studio.

The scheme critically includes what is being labeled as one of the city’s first Net Zero Energy (NZE) buildings — the all-new basketball wing of the larger, 40,000-square-foot facility — and is landscaped in a grid to evince five distinct ecologies: high desert, canyon, coastal, chaparral, and medicinal.

Image © Mike Kelley

Hood’s drought-tolerant landscape design is also said to be inspired by the early-20th-century abstract painters like George Braque and Fernand Leger. The upgraded facility it surrounds is an amalgam of pre-engineered metal buildings (PEMB) deliberately selected to reduce costs and the environmental impacts of materials used in the project, which came together at the start of 2015 thanks to s...

SPF:a unveils orange tree-inspired design for Anaheim Performing Arts Center in California

2018-02-19T19:44:00-05:00

After 20 years in the heart of Anaheim, California, the City National Grove of Anaheim venue will soon become the Anaheim Performing Arts Center. Today, SPF:a from Culver City unveiled their scheme for the new $500 million project.

For starters, the 500,000-square-foot campus will feature three theaters: a 2,000-seat concert hall, a 1,700-seat opera hall, and a 600-seat black box theatre. It'll also include a museum tower with an observatory set on a 24-foot podium, an outdoor amphitheater, a convention hall, office space, two restaurants, and lecture rooms.

Image courtesy of SPF:a.

The Anaheim Performing Arts Center in Anaheim, California by SPF:a. Image courtesy of SPF:a.

Featuring concentric circles and perforated copper-anodized cladding on the main structures, the campus pays tribute to Anaheim's agricultural history. After Anaheim's vineyards succumbed to disease in the late 19th century, the city invested in citriculture. “Anaheim’s socioeconomic drive...

SPF:architects' "Rainbow Bridge" is now open in Long Beach, CA

2018-02-08T20:13:00-05:00

SPF:architects' new pedestrian bridge, named "Rainbow Bridge", is now open to the public of Long Beach, CA. The bridge provides a connection between Long Beach's Convention Center and Performing Arts Center.

Rainbow Bridge by SPF:a located in Long Beach, CA. Image: SPF:a.

Previously, moving between these spaces required navigating loading docs and HVAC equipment on a stretch of the Seaside Way. Initially conceived of as a simple elevated sidewalk, the walkway developed into a much fuller project. Visitors can now not only easily connect between these two spaces, they can also enjoy an architectural experience along the way.

Rainbow Bridge by SPF:a located in Long Beach, CA. Image: SPF:a.

The finished project is a 600-foot bridge consisting of 76 custom-welded bent-steel ribs framing the top, and approximately 1,200 cubic yards of poured-in-place concrete shaping the base. The bridge canopy features 3,500 color-changing LED node lights, which can be programmed and synched to music to...

Check out these new renderings of Renzo Piano's Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in LA

2017-09-30T08:00:00-04:00

The film academy on Wednesday drummed up excitement for its forthcoming museum on the Miracle Mile, releasing a batch of new renderings [...] Pritzker-Prize winner Renzo Piano and architecture firm Gensler are restoring and reworking the Streamline Moderne-style department store built in 1939 to house a 288-seat cinematheque and spaces for exhibitions, an entire floor devoted to an “Oscars experience,” restaurants, and special events.

Sitting right next to Renzo Piano's other LA projects, the expansion buildings for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the new — and not entirely uncontroversial — film academy complex on Wilshire Boulevard is further coming along. While construction of the 130-foot tall 'bubble' theater and inside the old May Company building is making progress, the academy this week announced a $50-million donation from philanthropists Cheryl and Haim Saban and also released a new set of renderings.

Take a gander at the new images below.

"When it opens in 2019," Curbed Los Angeles reports, "the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will...

SPF:a’s Wallis Annenberg Center recognized at California Preservation Design Awards

2014-10-09T18:49:00-04:00

Since the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts by Studio Pali Fekete Architects (SPF:a) broke ground in 2010, the new arts building continues to gain recognition, most recently at the 31st California Preservation Design Awards. Situated in the heart of sunny Beverly Hills, California, the Wallis Annenberg Center complex also includes the restored and renovated historic 1934 Beverly Hills Post Office building.

More photos and project details on Bustler.

Design tweaks can't overcome Academy Museum's dramatic flaws

2014-04-16T14:07:00-04:00

If Brougher and other academy leaders can compel the architects to reconcile the clear potential of the new wing's interior spaces with its unconvincing, unwieldy exterior, they may be able to salvage the design before construction begins. If not, they may well have an architectural flop on their hands when the museum opens in 2017 — not to mention the third disappointing Piano building within a quarter-mile radius.

Motion Picture Academy unveils Renzo Piano's design for LA film museum

2013-04-16T15:25:00-04:00

Italian architect Renzo Piano, Los Angeles architect Zoltan Pali and officials from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled preliminary designs Thursday for a $300-million film museum at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. The architectural centerpiece of the 290,000-square-foot complex, just west of the campus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, would be a giant glass-enclosed dome, which Piano refers to as the "sphere" and the "soap bubble."

Los Angeles Gets a New Renzo Piano-designed Museum

2012-11-19T20:31:00-05:00

In 2016, if all goes according to plan, Los Angeles will have a new architectural showpiece and yet another place of pilgrimage for movie buffs—the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Created by the organization thanked in Oscar acceptance speeches, and designed by Genoa-based architect Renzo Piano and Los Angeles–based architect Zoltan Pali, the museum is envisioned as a place to celebrate both the history and future of film, with galleries, screening rooms, and an interactive education center.