This project is a redevelopment of a whole city block in Santa Monica, California. It extends Main Street’s streetfront retail edge and introduces much needed residential density on three levels above a retail level. Common amenity space, including a pool, is provided on the roof and in an enclosed courtyard.
Our driving urban design idea was to express the building, which occupies a whole city block, as a series of smaller attached buildings, each of which spans the width of each lot from which the overall land holding was assembled. The building design is a fiction based on a true story: that the block’s urban fabric was constructed over time by different architects in different regionally appropriate styles. Thus, we created a rich urban streetscape which is appropriate to the historic small-city Main Street which it occupies, rather than a result which looks like a singular large project.
Bob Abrahams as project Architect for Alan Boivin, AIA.
