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Look up La La Land, the tallest building west of the Mississippi River is now officially open. A number of key project principals and elected dignitaries descended upon 900 Wilshire Boulevard Friday afternoon to celebrate the completion of the 73-storey, 335-metre-tall Wilshire Grand Center, kickstarting a new age in Los Angeles skyscraper development.
Conceived by Korean Air and designed by AC Martin Partners, the tower is the first without a flat roof to be built in the downtown core since Los Angeles City Hall in 1928. The project proposed an alternative fire safety measure before the removal of a 1974-enacted ordinance in 2014, allowing the building to employ a curved roofline. Though it's commonly described as 'sail-shaped,' the curvilinear crown actually takes cues from an enormous granite formation in Yosemite Valley known as the Half Dome. It's this roof element and the erupting spire that allows it to soar past the U.S. Bank Tower, which had been the tallest building in Los Angeles since its completion in 1989.
While much of the public's attention will be focused on the upper levels of the supertall because of its sheer visibility, the ground-level offers a similarly dramatic visual experience, with a huge skylight flowing over the tower's entrance. Inside, the building hosts 900 InterContinental hotel rooms, 350,000 square feet of office space and 45,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.
A record-breaking concrete mat pour in February 2014 signified the enormous scale of the undertaking, and since construction began, 11,500 workers have spent 5,433,012 hours building the city's first sky lobby, a sky deck, and multiple outdoor spaces.
After the sun set, Angelenos were treated to a stunning light show emanating from the building's LED-equipped spine. Like something straight out of Blade Runner, rows of lights on the crown have the ability to display logos and advertisements, a feature the building's tenants will be putting to good use.
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