Spectacle of Nakedness
a proposal for a mixed use project in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, collaboration with Saba Salekfard, Jacklin Lee, Andrew Arytle
Instructor: Sarah Lorenzen and Andy Wilcox
Location: West Hollywood, Los Angeles
Date: 2015
Type: Mixed Use ( Shop + Office + Hotel + Bathhouse )
The project explores West Hollywood’s key characteristic: the desire to see and be seen. In addition to the given program of the project: hotel, office, and retail space, this project adds a bathhouse to enliven and activate the project. The design of this project allows hotel guests, office workers, and shoppers to be captivated by the bodies of bathers. It aims to create a layered performance space: a place of spectacle and “frisson”. The bathhouse is central to the history of West Hollywood. Unfortunately these bathhouses have been replaced by high-end retail and luxury apartments. This project is an opportunity to bring the bathhouse back. It will place the human body at the center both figuratively and literally. Thus, it will give people an opportunity to admire the body of others or to be admired themselves.
The building is organized in three programmatic layers; retails on the ground floor, offices on the second, and hotel on third, fourth, and fifth levels. Each layer’s design intent is different from one another but is connected with the geometries of recurring spas and bathhouses. The layers are connected with structural circulation cores featuring stairs and elevators. Secondary cores act as light wells, and will provide an additional layer of structure. Pools present themselves as spherical additions and subtractions from the more normative project prism. The result of the spaces created allows visitors to wander above, between, and below the geometries to see and be seen.
The City of West Hollywood has its own unique cultural attitude towards the body and to self-expression. The buff, male body is an object of desire-one that is often on display. Health retailers, vitamin shops, gyms, and spas are common and part of the populations’ interest in maintaining a fit and healthy body. As a generator for “frisson” and friction, the bathhouse occurs in all layers of the project. Spherical geometries continue across floors, accenting baths and landscapes. The interruptions of the pools allows for various sights to be connected. They exist in all contexts, providing visual connections between the different levels. Users could be working at desks and see hotel residents bathing above them. Spectacle of Nakedness re-introduces the bathhouse, a historical program of West Hollywood, to redefine the conventional mixed use program typology, concurrently, provide the city its historic identity.
Location: West Hollywood, Los Angeles
Date: 2015
Type: Mixed Use ( Shop + Office + Hotel + Bathhouse )
The project explores West Hollywood’s key characteristic: the desire to see and be seen. In addition to the given program of the project: hotel, office, and retail space, this project adds a bathhouse to enliven and activate the project. The design of this project allows hotel guests, office workers, and shoppers to be captivated by the bodies of bathers. It aims to create a layered performance space: a place of spectacle and “frisson”. The bathhouse is central to the history of West Hollywood. Unfortunately these bathhouses have been replaced by high-end retail and luxury apartments. This project is an opportunity to bring the bathhouse back. It will place the human body at the center both figuratively and literally. Thus, it will give people an opportunity to admire the body of others or to be admired themselves.
The building is organized in three programmatic layers; retails on the ground floor, offices on the second, and hotel on third, fourth, and fifth levels. Each layer’s design intent is different from one another but is connected with the geometries of recurring spas and bathhouses. The layers are connected with structural circulation cores featuring stairs and elevators. Secondary cores act as light wells, and will provide an additional layer of structure. Pools present themselves as spherical additions and subtractions from the more normative project prism. The result of the spaces created allows visitors to wander above, between, and below the geometries to see and be seen.
The City of West Hollywood has its own unique cultural attitude towards the body and to self-expression. The buff, male body is an object of desire-one that is often on display. Health retailers, vitamin shops, gyms, and spas are common and part of the populations’ interest in maintaining a fit and healthy body. As a generator for “frisson” and friction, the bathhouse occurs in all layers of the project. Spherical geometries continue across floors, accenting baths and landscapes. The interruptions of the pools allows for various sights to be connected. They exist in all contexts, providing visual connections between the different levels. Users could be working at desks and see hotel residents bathing above them. Spectacle of Nakedness re-introduces the bathhouse, a historical program of West Hollywood, to redefine the conventional mixed use program typology, concurrently, provide the city its historic identity.
