ARCH TOUR FEST: 900 Wilshire Renewal 2026
Photo Credit: Hunter Kerhart
ARCH TOUR FEST: 900 Wilshire Renewal
Restrained yet extensive recladding and volumetric subtractions/additions to a tired boulevard office building in order to RENEW an existing building while capturing and reducing its original carbon footprint. The reimagined building enhances its site and its occupants’ connection to the immediately surrounding urban ecology as well as distant views.
Our Office Building’s expansive glazing opens the Interior Spaces to the surrounding environment and enhances the wellness quality of the workplace. By placing emphasis on transparency and by blurring the building perimeter through a series of balconies, terraces, and lookouts, the work environment promotes communications and synergy and privileges a connection with the Urban realm beyond. Continuous cornice lines frame verandas and direct views to the Mountains and Ocean.
Our design celebrates Santa Monica. At the Northwest corner a projected ‘picture window’ captures the unique Ocean Sunset Views. A segment of the glazed façade along Wilshire is angled to reflect the Pacific Horizon; like an open hand, it directs one to the main entrance, directly connecting the building with its adjoining urban context.
Tour Led By:
Hraztan Zeitlian, AIA – Founder, Struere
Hraztan Zeitlian is the Founder of award-winning Architectural firm STRUERE, West Los Angeles. Design is Hraztan’s passion. His work has garnered numerous Design Awards, including an AIA National Award for 900 Wilshire, as well as 3 American Architecture National Design Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum and 2 American Institute of Architects Los Angeles Chapter Awards. In addition, his work has received Design Awards from the AIA National Academy of Architecture for Justice, the AIA California Council and multiple AIA Chapters throughout Southern California, as well as from a number of Los Angeles area organizations such as LABC, LABJ, SCDF, WUF, etc. He brings a forward thinking, experimental approach to design, he seeks in each project opportunities for innovation.
Architect: Struere
Building Credits
Architect: Struere
Contractor: Cal-City Construction
Structural Engineer: Nabih Youssef Associates
Landscape Architect: Troller Mayer Associates, Inc.
AIA CES: 1.0 LU|HSW Approved
Learning Objectives:
Design for Integration. Participants will be able to explain how this renovation (and renewal) saves and sustains the existing office building’s carbon footprint from the wrecking ball and breathes new life into it by opening up the building’s interior spaces to the surrounding urban environment, in an effort to enhance the wellness quality of the interior workplace.
Design for Equitable Communities. Participants will observe how this project provides continuous balconies on multiple levels that are open to all users within. This gives the building users equitable access to weather protected outdoor work areas with wifi that are non-hierarchical and available to all.
Good design adds value for owners, occupants, community, and planet, regardless of project size and budget. Participants will be able to describe this mixed use project with community serving commercial spaces or retail on the ground floor, with upper floors divided between offices on street facing sides and residential units to the rear of the building facing south the ideal solar orientation. Cost saving strategies included the implementation of the renovation strictly from the exterior of the building, without impacting the users within and their operations.
Participants will be able to outline how good design reduces energy use and eliminates dependence on fossil fuels, while improving building performance, function, comfort, and enjoyment.
Parking
Street parking available.
