Independence Park Administrative Building
Downey, Calif.
Frank R. Webb Architects

Frank R. Webb Architects has transformed a dreary aeronautics building near Los Angeles into offices for a health-care provider

© Fred Daly

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By Joseph Giovannini

The desolate mammoth that the nonprofit health-care-delivery provider Kaiser Permanente found in an industrial wasteland of expired aeronautics factories in Downey, California, was so off-putting that the employees, based in Pasadena, at first refused even to consider the move. Abandoned for five years, the building was a cold, characterless, 160,000-square-foot concrete bunker designed circa 1970 by engineers for Rockwell, an aerospace company whose demands for secrecy precluded windows and skylights.

The Los Angeles firm of Frank R. Webb Architects looked inside the ungenerous box for an architectural point of departure. Above the suspended ceiling on the first floor they found it in the form of coffered concrete ceilings, supported by columns with formerly concealed monumental conical capitals worthy of Karnak. Although the second floor did not have the same architectural heft—there the structure changed to thin steel columns supporting tapered steel girders––they decided to expose the heroic concrete structure, with loftlike interiors open to the ceilings.

By revealing the columns and coffered ceiling, Webb and his team used the existing tectonics to organize the plan—the columns mark the space around which the architects placed conference rooms and offices on the vast floors. Passages expand and contract as these offices and conference pavilions grip and release the interior streets. These small structures within the larger one create a village scale, catalyzing the open-office field with a lively interior urbanism.

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Formal name of Project:
Independence Park Administrative Building

Location:
Downey, Calif.

Gross square footage:
160,000 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$16 million

Owner:
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.
393 E. Walnut Street, Parsons Annex
Pasadena, CA 91188

Architect:
Frank R. Webb Architects, Inc.
8607 Venice Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 559 4717
(310) 559 9174 fax
www.teamfwa.com