DETAILS
Founder Harry Culver’s renowned axiom, “All roads lead to Culver City,” acquires new meaning with a spectacular addition to ongoing downtown revitalization. The Culver Steps is a public/private collaboration between The City of Culver City and Hackman Capital Partners devised to highlight the city’s creative “maker tradition,” from its involvement in the filmmaking industry to feats of engineering like the “Spruce Goose. They are framed on one side by Culver Studios, (famed for productions like Gone with the Wind and Arrested Development) and on the other by the Culver Hotel (once frequented by John Wayne and Charlie Chaplin). Not just a celebration of the past, the plaza is centered on today’s award-winning restaurants, transit, and culture.
Inspired by the adjacent foothills of the sierras, the open space design brings nature into the heart of Culver City, integrating stepped terraces, hilly topography, and tree cover. Canted walls and custom-designed planters flank the steps’ nearly 50-foot-wide span, with integrated plantings between the ground plane and second level. The grand architectural staircase that is the project’s centerpiece invites artists, writers, filmmakers, and restaurateurs to gather and share ideas; the renewed connection to nature serves as a placemaking foundation, and is paired with identity and activation strategies to engage the community in the new plaza’s success.
In June 2018, The Culver Steps was awarded the Los Angeles Business Council’s Under Construction Award, followed in 2019 by a Best of Design Award from The Architect’s Newspaper. This signature civic destination has already attracted high-profile tenants including Amazon Studios and promises to promote diversity and interaction for locals and visitors while establishing a strong identity for Culver City’s downtown.
Work attributed to SWA/Balsley principal Gerdo Aquino and his team with SWA Group.
San Jacinto Plaza
The redesign of San Jacinto Plaza, a historic gathering place in El Paso’s downtown business district provides a state-of-the-art urban open space, while protecting and celebrating the history and culture of the site. The project was the result of an intensive community process involving input from a wide range of constituents. Active programming, environmenta...
Shanghai International Dance Center
Inspired by the idea of movement, this collaboration with Studios Architecture achieves an artful harmony of building with landscape, program with site. The image of a dancer in grand jete kindled the designers’ imaginations and served as the project’s organizing idea. Asia’s first professional dance complex is tucked between a freeway, a subway station...
33 Beekman
33 Beekman Street Plaza is a public plaza that also serves as the front entrance to a new 30-story Pace University Dormitory, located in the financial district. The contemporary plaza appearance synchronizes with the contemporary plaza of Frank Gehry’s high-rise residential tower across Beekman Street to South.
Jinbocho Redevelopment
Situated in central Tokyo’s university and publishing district, this new mixed-use project brought urban streetscape character to its immediate neighborhood through the introduction of plazas whose fountains, seating areas, cafes and sculptures serve residents, workers, and the community as a refuge from the busy streets.
A diagram of pedestrian flows t...