Last month, news emerged that a parking structure across the street from the Whole Foods Market and Bottega Louie in Downtown Los Angeles is set to make way for a new development that would add to the neighborhood's collection of data centers. Now, architecture firm OfficeUntitled is offering a glimpse of what the completed project should look like.
Slated for a site located at 727 S. Grand Avenue, the new construction would rise 13 stories in height, featuring 486,000 square feet of space, nearly all of which would house servers and other equipment for private clients. Plans also call for approximately 13,000 square feet of offices, which would provide space for a small number of employees, as well as parking on the second and third floors of the building.
View looking southeast from 7th StreetOfficeUntitled
As is common with data centers, the approximately 279-foot-tall building is not planned with windows for security purposes. However, OfficeUntitled does not intend for the building to have completely blank walls.
"To ensure this lack of windows does not result in a monolith out of character the active and vibrant vision for Downtown Los Angeles proposed by the Community Plan, the façade of the building will be comprised of a playful system of angled panels that create a striking articulation on the building's skin," reads a social media post explaining the design. "By playing with light, shadow, reflectivity, and form, this dynamic architectural skin will change throughout the day and year, striking a unique balance between solidity and ephemerality."
Street-level view from across Grand AvenueOfficeUntitled
As noted above, data centers are not unheard of in Downtown - several older commercial buildings nearby already serve that purpose. Directly north, the historic J. W. Robinson Co. department store 7th Street currently houses a data center on its upper floors. Another notable property, the One Wilshire high-rise at 624 S. Grand Avenue, also dedicates much of its floor area to a data center. A mile and a half to the northeast, the former Post Office Annex near Union Station has been converted into a data center, and newly built facility recently replaced an adjacent surface parking lot.
Digital Realty, a San Francisco-based real estate firm specializing in data centers, is developing the 727 Grand site.
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