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Rockin' Out

New Hollywood headquarters resembles its audio prodcuts


Courtesy Shimoda Design
The new Ametron headquarters in Hollywood is designed to resemble a collection of mics and radios.


05.13.2010

Sam Lubell

It doesn’t get much more Hollywood than this: LA architect Joey Shimoda is designing the new headquarters for Ametron Electronics, a major supplier of production equipment for the film industry. In a real feat of stagecraft, Shimoda said the 20-story, 218,000 square-foot building takes the inspiration for its form is Ametron owner Fred Rosenthal’s collection of sleek vintage microphones and radios.

The tower, located in the heart of Hollywood, will be made up of several varied components to provide a variety of uses and to break down the mass. “We didn’t want a boring rectangle,” Shimoda said. “We wanted to create a building that has personality and will be remembered for its shape. We were also interested in creating a something that is not a billboard backdrop,” an all too common problem in Hollywood.



Courtesy Shimoda Design
A complex of structural systems holds up the various buildings.


The building will consist of office space and a small Radio and Microphone Museum on the ground floor, parking on the next seven floors, and offices above. The office portion will be clad with a diagonally-braced steel or concrete exterior structure above and a more conventional glass and aluminum curtain wall below. The parking structure will be clad with flat slab concrete with intricate skin treatments.

Shimoda stressed building a humane connection between the building and the street; a rarity in jumbled Hollywood. The project will include a small water moat at the property line with bridges into the storefronts, canopies on both street frontages, and lush street trees and planter buffers. The lobby will include a reflecting pool.

Completion is planned for 2016. The project manager will be Anne Gray, publisher of Balcony Press and Form Magazine, who once worked as facilities director at Paramount Studios.

Source: http://archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=4526