The Culver Steps | Culver City, California | 2018

Architects: Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects
Client: Hackman Capital Partners, LLC. Structural Engineers 
Landscape Architects: SWA Group
Photographers: Eric Staudenmaier Photography and Paul Vu Photography
Owner: The City of Culver City
General Contractor: KPRS Construction Services
Structural Engineers: Saiful/Bouquet

The Culver Steps is a 115,000 sqft mixed-use development located in the heart of downtown Culver City adjacent to multiple historic and iconic structures. The program includes ground-level retail, a four-story office building, and a Grand Stair that leads pedestrians up to a restaurant pavilion and landscaped Elevated Plaza perched above the existing Town Square.

The project weaves into the urban fabric by sensitively scaling the building elements and relating to the surrounding brick and beige material palette. Retail shops are strategically located to energize the existing sidewalks and streets. This project is a new landmark that incorporates instantly recognizable architectural elements and builds on the City's identity as a place of entertainment, history, and pedestrian-centered activity.

The Grand Stair of white concrete serves the dual purpose of drawing people to the Elevated Plaza as well as providing amphitheater seating on tree-lined terraces for the Summer Series concerts, performances, and outdoor screenings. Located at the busy corner of Culver and Washington Boulevards - an intersection that is the symbolic gateway to downtown Culver City - the building's dramatic rounded retail corner announces it as such.

The scale and proportions of the development, and the way the building components relate to the outdoor spaces - and one another - create a graceful presence in the surrounding area. The landscaped public spaces characterize and bind the masterplan together. Also included are two levels of new subterranean public parking.

Interior Spaces for retail and offices have glass doors that slide or roll up to take advantage of the climate, fusing indoor & outdoor activities into a cohesive garden environment in the heart of the city, all perched above the existing town square.

Culver City is experiencing giant shifts. Once a backwater, it is now a place where people want to live, and a vibrant city in which companies want to conduct business. The area is attracting more and more retail businesses and higher-income residents. Just opening, the new Culver Steps development is at the heart of this exciting regeneration, and the project represents the merging of public and private spaces, created to work in harmony. It is an inspired civic space that optimizes available resources and brings people together in a welcoming, pedestrian-friendly community.