One year after our last update, construction is complete for the latest addition to NBCUniversal's studio lot, allowing for a comparison between rendering and reality.

Aerial view of the campusHathaway Dinwiddie

The campus, located along Lankershim Boulevard at Universal Hollywood Drive, includes:

  • an 11-story, 331,000-square-foot office building;
  • an 84,000-square-foot employee center known as "the Commons";
  • an eight-story, 1,265-car parking garage; and
  • the addition of offices, food services, conference facilities, and screening rooms to existing buildings.

Lever Architecture designed the campus, with House & Robertson Architects serving as architect of record and Field Operations and landscape architect.

Aerial view of the office building and employee center looking northeastHunter Kerhart Architectural Photography

A recent profile in the Los Angeles Times notes that the design of the campus takes what would normally be an inward-facing office environment into a community integrated with green space and nature.

"The team employed three key moves: They replaced the ho-hum street with an intricate, tree-lined pedestrian passage, complemented by a grassy, pavilion-lined central green and interlaced planted spaces. They excavated a large hill on the corner of the site, letting them pull back One Universal, the project’s glassy, two-volumed office, opening space and light for the central green. And they created the Commons, a circular building (inspired by a zoetrope, the spinning circular contraption that first made moving pictures) shaded by an intricately latticed white metal screen, containing amenities for the entire campus and serving as its centerpiece."

Aerial view of the office building and employee center looking southeastHunter Kerhart Architectural Photography

Though the downturn that has beset Hollywood in the past two years has put a damper on some ambitions, the project is yet another example of legacy studios across L.A. County investing in modernizations and expansions of their historic properties. A 1.4-million-square-foot expansion of the Paramount Pictures lot was approved in 2016, while entitlements are pending for $1.5-billion overhaul of Fox Studios in Century City.

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