U.S. Building of the Week

Second Home Hollywood

Selgascano
20. Januar 2020
Photo: Iwan Baan
Project: Second Home Hollywood, 2019
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Client: Second Home
Architect: Selgascano
  • Principals in Charge: José Selgas, Lucía Cano
  • Project Team: Diego Cano-Lasso, María Levene, Inés Olavarrieta, Paolo Tringali, Sixto Cordero, Víctor Jiménez, Sara Ouass, Pilar Cano-Lasso, Catalina Vázquez, Juan José Muñoz Muñoz, Julian Ocampo, Juan Saez Pedraja
  • Lighting and Furniture Design: Alejandro Cano
Structural Engineer: Walter P.Moore
Mechanical Engineer: Henderson Engineers INC
Interior Designer: Selgascano
Landscape Architect: Selgascano / Second Home
Civil Engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers
General Contractor: Swinerton / Second Home USA 
Site Area: 90,854 sf
Building Area: 40,340 sf
Photography: Iwan Baan
Photo: Iwan Baan

The new Second Home in Hollywood, holLA, is a collection of several recipes and ingredients of a California Cocktail. HolLA lays in East Hollywood on a 90,800-square-foot site with two existing buildings, of which we have to maintain one with two floors, designed in 1964 by Paul Williams, the first recognized African-American architect working in Los Angeles. This building has a classical Neocolonialism Los Angeles look and is used as a core and main entrance for the whole campus. In this existing building 320 roaming places are located in the ground floor and additional offices with 200 workspaces are in the firs floor, with common facilities such as café, bar, restaurant, events and conference hall, resting areas and open terraces, all around the building.

Photo: Iwan Baan
Photo: Iwan Baan

The other existing building was demolished and, on top of the existing underground parking, 60 new oval-shaped individual offices and meeting rooms are placed, surrounded by a garden that will be the Second Home for almost 700 people. Four different oval shapes create the 60 bungalow offices of 4 different sizes, that are scattered around the garden built with 4 feet of soil on top of the parking slab, burying the bungalows down to the table height. The transparent curved walls allow 360o horizontal views of the plants, giving the feeling to be working among nature.

Photo: Iwan Baan
Photo: Iwan Baan

The interior spaces in this project go pretty much unnoticed and the main focus is outdoors, which is quintessential to the living style in Los Angeles. In Second Home Hollywood, instead of bringing the garden inside the office, we have brought the office out to the garden. Sixty one-level standalone offices in the garden of a Paul Williams building. Offices (pots) surrounded by planters (plant pots). Over 10,000 plants and trees, many butterflies, ants, bees, squirrels... and humans inhabit these pots. The wooden and concrete paths break through the garden with plants in both sides, as a stroll through yearlong flowers.

Photo: Iwan Baan
Photo: Iwan Baan
Photo: Iwan Baan

“If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, and then make a change”. Second Home Hollywood is an experiment for the average office worker: co-exist daily with living things other than humans. This approximation to nature is not the only step towards a more sustainable living: plants reduce the temperature and provide shade; the clear façade eliminates the necessity of artificial lighting and has 3 operable openings for natural cross-ventilation; all the water at the site is collected in two cisterns totaling 37,000 gallons of storage capacity to be used for irrigation.

Photo: Iwan Baan
Photo: Iwan Baan
Photo: Iwan Baan

Second Home Hollywood has replaced 90,800 square feet of hardscape for 70,000 square feet of landscape. What previously was a parking lot is now a garden. It is one of the few private developments in history in which the footprint of the built-environment has been returned to natural-environment.

Ground Level Plan (Drawing: Selgascano)
Upper Level Plan (Drawing: Selgascano)
Section and Pots (Drawing: Selgascano)
Landscape Plan (Drawing: Selgascano)
Bungalow Wall Section (Drawing: Selgascano)

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