AKA: Blue Whale, West Hollywood, CA

Structure Type: built works - commercial buildings - commercial buildings

Designers: Gruen, Victor, Associates, Architecture / Planning / Engineering (firm); Pelli, Cesar and Associates, Architects (firm); Victor David Gruen (architect); Cesar Pelli (architect); Norma Merrick Sklarek (architect)

Dates: constructed 1971

8687 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90069-5701

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Building History

Architect Cesar Pelli (born 10/12/1926 in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina) designed this immense design complex while working as a Partner for Design with the Victor Gruen firm from 1968-1977.

Building Notes

The book Color of Townscape described the Pacific Design Center in 1981: "A center for exhibitions on the design market--products, models, prototypes--this building is itself an exhibit. Surrounded by temporary-looking structures, the mammoth blue mass, completely mirror-surfaced, stands alone against the sky, its elevation, like its plan, of imposing simplicity." (See Martina Düttmann, Friedrich Schmuck, Johannes Uhl, Color in Townscape, [San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1981], p. 51.)

Alteration

Two additional buildings, one sheathed in green glass, the other in maroon, were designed by Cesar Pelli in 1985-1988.

PCAD id: 1244