The height of daring design
With a steel spire as its calling card, the skyscraper offers a preview of what a more liberated skyline might look like
Lying in unremarkable repose, the last piece of steel to be raised atop the Wilshire Grand skyscraper rested among the dirt and debris of the job site, a baton awaiting the performance.
At 7:22 a.m. on Sept 3, the tower crane began to lift the 58foot section of the building’s spire on an eight-minute journey to the top, where, once bolted into place, it would give the Wilshire Grand the distinction of being the tallest building in the western United States.
Rising 1,100 feet — not counting a 2-foot lightning rod attached to the top — the towering high-rise at Figueroa Street and Wilshire Boulevard has earned its place in history as one of the loftiest structures structures to be built in an active earthquake zone.
But for Angelenos, the Wilshire Grand is most remarkable for changing the skyline of Los Angeles.
After years of negotiations in its early planning stages, its architects won concessions from city officials to shake off the old requirements of highrise design — boxy and flatroofed — and create a more stylish, vertical ornament for the building’s roof.
For more than 40 years, the skyscrapers of Los Angeles have followed a building code that required landing sites for helicopters on top of all highrises to be used in the event of emergencies. Architects for the Wilshire Grand, however, proposed an alternative that took a more modern approach to safety, which the city accepted and soon adopted for future construction.
Today the Wilshire Grand offers a preview of what a more liberated skyline in the city might look like. Urban designers and architects have applauded the change, believing that one day the airspace above the ubiquitous sprawl will incorporate the more daring and aesthetic shapes that have emerged in cities around the world.
“The flat-topped building has created one appearance to the high-rises of downtown,” said Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan, “but this evolution allows architects to do more and to have a broader palette.”
The spire, designed in tandem with an adjoining structure of steel and glass known as the sail, serves as the Wilshire Grand’s calling card. Its final 18 feet, a column of perforated stainless steel, glows with one of four LED lights: red, blue, green or gold.
Luminous by day, illuminated by night and branded with the logo of the building’s owner — Korean Airlines — the spire and the sail are visible throughout the region and, for visitors downtown, an invitation from the street to gaze skyward to some imaginary vanishing point.
“Who knows what this will lead to and how skyscrapers will continue to evolve in the city?” said Maltzan.
For architect David Martin, who viewed the spire’s final assembly from a rooftop two blocks away, the end of construction culminated a dream put in motion nearly 10 years ago when he first began drawing a concept for the $1-billion complex.
He never doubted he would succeed.
“The nature of being an architect,” he said, “is to be a dreamer.”
By 8:06 that morning, ironworkers finished bolting together the inside collar of the spire assembly, and the connection to the crane was released. The FAA navigational beacon on its tip glowed red.
“Towers first and foremost represent the ambitions, aspirations and identity of the developers and the corporations inside of them,” Maltzan said, “but they also represent the city that they are in.”