SPRING STREET LOT
Los Angeles, CA
A trio of derelict warehouse buildings on a light-industrial parcel in LA’s Chinatown neighborhood is transformed into a creative campus. The landscape animates the architecture, artfully stitched together the ensemble of buildings to create a coherent micro-campus devoted to cultural cross-pollination.
The campus landscape stages a mix of creative, culinary, and community events, including music, fashion, film, and food markets. It generates a sense of community amongst creative tenants and visitors, and forges connections with remnants of the city’s historic natural habitat and the graffiti-covered urban context.
One space was retrofitted for David Chang’s Majordomo restaurant, the other built out for creative offices. In this ‘space between’, where a weekly green market pops up, Elysian also developed a chef’s garden, with Onggi fermentation pots embedded within, that wraps the outdoor dining patio. An African Sumac tree at the center of the patio steps off ‘Pipette’, a dreamy fable in the form of a mural by Taiwanese-American artist James Jean, animating the scene.
Client: Gaw Capital
Design Team:
Elysian Landscapes
Completed: 2018
Area: 2.7 acres