CHH’s proposal for a performing arts center and cultural hub for Melrose Hill is, in many ways, a love letter to Los Angeles, drawing from the unique theatrical landscape of the city’s billboards and sunsets while celebrating vernacular aesthetics of the iconic built environment. The design feels at home in its context through appropriate scale, connection to the street, and materiality, while also creating unexpected moments of delight through framing of views, abundant landscaping, and artistic interventions.

The transparent flytower extends the theater to the street, at times creating a glowing backdrop along Western Avenue and giving a peek behind the curtain, so to speak. Its glassy volume borrows its structural sensibilities from the “Los Angeles Case Study Program.” Parking and back-of-house programs are sunken underground to limit the building mass and privilege the pedestrian experience for the neighborhood. Nature spills over the rigid forms to soften their presence and to invite pedestrians up onto the various levels of public space that extend from the sidewalk. Architectural forms in tandem with landscape elements create opportunities for informal performance, with a sculpted rooftop lawn and amphitheater framing views of the city and the LA sky at sunset. The restaurant and bar blend with a landscaped terrace to serve both patrons at intermission and the local community every day. Inside, the state-of-the-art theater utilizes hydraulic platforms to accommodate a range of configurations that support a spectrum of performance types from traditional to experimental, a practical approach to flexibility.