THE WINNING IDEA / A RETROFIT SOLUTION
The Los Angeles building clearly
needs a retrofit. An eight-story box
with roughly 100,000 square feet to
a floor, it sits on 4. 4 prime acres at the
Los Angeles Civic Center. Its clean
lines and 20-foot-high lobby were the
work of three local legends: Welton
Becket (forerunner of Ellerbe Becket),
Albert C. Martin (whose sons continue
his firm as AC Martin Partners), and
Paul R. Williams (the first recorded
African-American member of the
American Institute of Architects and
an AIA fellow). It is also a reminder
of the Great Society’s expansion of
government services.
Today, tenants such as the Internal
Revenue System, the U.S. Bankruptcy
Court, and the U.S. Attorneys occupy
acres of offices and cubicles. Meanwhile, the steel-frame structure,
with its single-pane-glass and pebble-studded-concrete exterior, leaks energy
like a sieve. Featureless hallways provide a workday experience as unhealthy
as eight hours in one of the building’s
below-grade offices. Still, there can
be daylight at the end of this dreary
design tunnel.
Though modernism cast architecture as the perfect machine, the Process
continued from page 103
Zero team looked instead to nature.
Walzak, who completed a master’s
degree at Roger Williams University
only last year, persuaded colleagues
to think abstractly, to see the building
as a living cell. “Designers know that
the simplest solution is always the
best,” he says, echoing his professors.
Developing the algae module and
bioreactor fell to Sean Quinn, a 31-year-
old sustainable-design specialist for
HOK and the lead architect and project
manager for continued on page 106
