Proving his adeptness with “design at all scales” (his eponymous firm’s mantra), Neil M. Denari, AIA, has recently begun design for a three-story office building in Beverly Hills, Calif. The 15,500-square-foot site hosts two floors of offices cantilevering over the first floor’s side lobby entrance—which has a shaped exterior soffit that connects to the Wilshire Boulevard front façade. The cantilever results from a volumetric shift of the top two floors of 9000 Wilshire away from the neighboring building; this shift also allows for a small second-floor terrace between the structures. The building is wrapped in alternating bands of black stainless steel and low-iron glazing. NMDA “developed beveled spandrel panels that create stacked-floor ‘modules’ as a way to subtly, yet effectively, modify the prismatic nature of the building,” says Denari, a 2011 AIA Los Angeles Gold Medal winner. Parking, always an issue in L.A., will be accommodated by an automated system occupying three levels below grade. NMDA aims to achieve a minimum of LEED Gold certification, and a 2014 opening.
