The jury took their time to review and deliberate the merits of this project which were many, from the thoughtful use of natural light to the restrained manor in which they added to and subtracted from the existing structure. The sum of these architectural interventions is a thoughtful building with an interesting program that offers good lessons towards the preservation of older structures as their intended uses wane, offering opportunity for a new program in their often compelling architectural shell. Congratulations Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects.

Project Data:

Firm Name:              Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects

Completion Date:     10/1/2020

Square Footage:      430000

Building Use:           Creative Office Campus, Food Hall, and public park (Rail Trail)

Location:                 Costa Mesa, California

Project Description:

In Costa Mesa lies the former auxiliary Los Angeles Times Printing Press facility. An industrial complex of concrete panels upon steel frames was erected throughout the second half of the last century. They endured beyond the rise of digital information and the decline of printed media. With the removal of the printing presses, these largely abandoned structures persist as ruins, a quiet testament to an earlier era of information consumption.

Unable to return to its original utility, The Press embarks on a new life reimagined as creative office. Space for machines becomes space for workers. The transformative design allows the 430,000 sf space to be sub-divided for up to 17 unique tenants with floor-plates ranging from 10,000-40,000 sf.

The design team was challenged to keep the integrity of the existing structure (for cost as well as design purposes) but to transform it into a contemporary, flexible office space. This resulted in a strategy of “selective subtraction” where strategic interventions were made to either introduce more light, fresh air or to open a once concealed space. An open-air atrium is inserted into the central press line, enhancing the arrival experience and prompting chance encounters as circulatory paths cross. A Skycut slices across the building to introduce daylight, access and create a pedestrian path through the site. A former mechanical penthouse becomes a hideaway rooftop bar. Leviathan volumes for printing presses become cathedral-like workplaces. Loading docks and canopy overhangs become continuous back porches - opportunities for refection, fitness, and collaboration.

Landscape ties together the site and structure - suggesting a ruin recaptured by nature. Subtraction also allows for otherwise hidden, beautiful architectural moments to be discovered. Clerestory windows newly cut into the high volume of a previously deadened press line fill the space with light. Tinted glass facades are pulled away to reveal the layer of austere steel structures behind. Where additive elements are introduced, they deliberately contrast with the existing building, clarifying old versus new.

A new building was added that literally and conceptually buttresses the existing structure, each enhancing the other. Creating flexibility for the client, the Addition helps attract a variety of tenants with both new construction and renovation. The mechanical and circulatory core is pulled to the exterior intersection of old and new - bringing new, shared life into the complex. A 35-foot high space on the west end of the site (formerly used for paper storage) is transformed into a communal food hall, for all tenants to gather.

With a focus on enhancing the existing structural shell through selective subtraction, the adaptive-reuse project will embrace natural light while preserving much of the existing structure in a cost-conscious but provocative manner. The result is a rich and humanized campus, and a living monument to the persistent dynamism of our ever-evolving culture.

C.O.T.E. | Committee on the Environment

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