La Opinion Offices
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La Opinion Offices and Printing Facility Sparked by a strong interest in the dynamic urbanism of Los Angeles, the La Opinion Headquarters examines the Broadway corridor as a site in the downtown core. This linear slot of Manhattan-like urbanism is comprised of a fairly consistent fabric of eight to ten story buildings built in the previous century. As downtown becomes ‘urban’ (again), it is undergoing massive shifts in economies, scales and uses, conflating to produce the metropolitan. La Opinion is the leading Spanish language newspaper for the Southern California region. In response to a need to bring administration and production into a single location, the new headquarters asserts itself as an urban presence. The production facilities are positioned in a tall, single story space located below grade along the east side of the site at Main Street. A field of linear skylights illuminate the entire space, while large windows to the street above allow passersby to observe the printing activity below. Small commercial venues are located at the street level along Broadway to the west, while the editorial offices for the paper occupy the gently curving ten-story bar building above. A large public event space, along with a daycare center for employees’ children float as discrete forms in the roof of the production hall and provide an interface between the offices above and the place of production below. In addition to promoting frequent chance interactions amongst a wide spectrum of occupants, this programming strategy serves to blur and conflate the mission of the newspaper as a collective, public voice with the people and public spaces that inhabit it. Project credits:
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