Belzberg Architects has been located in th City of Santa Monica. The firm has earned over 48 national and local design awards including over 20 from the American Institute of Architects. Two examples of their memorable projects are the haunting Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and a technologically dazzling academic building at Occidental College
Joan Behnke & Associates, meanwhile, has designed houses for celebrity athlete-model couple Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen as well as members of the Forbes billionaires list. Put Hagy Belzberg and Joan Behnke together, and you’ve got an instant landmark in the L.A. landscape—more specifically a 1960’s Beverly Hills building renovated, expanded, and furnished for a venture-capital firm, the Gores Group.
Belzberg explains, “The building was being designed at the same time that it was being renovated.” Part of that involved moving the main entry from a front corner to the back alley, where there was enough space to add a porte cochere. The alley also runs between the 1960’s building and Belzberg’s ground-up addition. A bridge joins the two volumes, totaling 135,000 square feet.
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That glass exterior, unifying old and new, is transparent or opaque to varying degrees. Thanks to the three iterations Belzberg designed for the glass, plus a dozen patterns for the interlayer, almost infinite combinations—and perceptions—are possible for the panels. “They have a kinetic quality as the light changes during the day,” he adds.
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Topping it all off, the roof terrace is sheltered by another stunning canopy. This one’s panels of white-painted aluminum were laser-cut in an intricate computer-generated pattern to produce a kaleidoscopic shadow play on the poured concrete—in keeping with Belzberg’s mantra of bringing “architectural innovation” to every aspect of a project.
Source: Interior Design