Beverly Hills, Calif.
NMDA, Inc.

Liberating an interior from its boxy container, Neil Denari produces the curvaceous, cool white Endeavor Talent Agency

	Click images to view larger
	Photo © Benny Chan / Fotoworks
	The section (above) cuts through the screening room, in red, and its lobby. Colorfully pixilated wallpapers accent several upper-floor end walls (above). Folding planes—some continuous, some overlapping—weave across Endeavor’s ceilings and a few of its walls, melding together the duplex’s two levels (below).
	Left: Neil Denari, AIA (Principal) Right: Duks Koschitz (Lead designer)
	Click here to see the people & products

It’s been worth the wait. Los Angeles architect Neil Denari, AIA, belongs to that category of architect who came to the construction site late—that is, after years of teaching, theorizing, and pursuing projects that proved elusive. But l.a. Eyeworks, a boutique he completed in 2002, finally gave him exposure and credibility. Now Denari is on a roll, with commissions from Los Angeles to Manhattan and Tokyo. Most recently, he completed the offices of Endeavor Talent Agency, on Wilshire Boulevard in the heart of Beverly Hills, a build-out in a 1960s structure.

Endeavor, a new arrival in the entertainment industry, has launched itself on an ascendant arc that has already placed the company on a level with CCA and ICM. In the past decade, architecture has become an attendant art in that industry, with many moguls buying classic midcentury homes, and some commissioning top architects to create pedigreed buildings for their corporate offices. Just down the block from Endeavor, I.M. Pei famously designed CCA’s headquarters, setting local precedent for architecture enlisted in the cause of corporate image and prestige.

As an agency in need of an architect, Endeavor did what it does best, launching a talent search and “auditioning” more than a dozen top local firms carefully scouted by Tom Strickler, the partner in charge of the project. The company’s previous five-floor home had stratified the agency. For its new quarters, Endeavor leased Beverly Hills’s biggest floor plate—at 27,000 square feet—and asked Denari to meld the third and fourth story into a duplex. “Maximizing communication was critical,” says the architect, referring in particular to the rapport between agents and assistants, who usually work just outside the agent’s office within constant visual and verbal reach.

The agent/assistant adjacency—an inviolable, almost ritualistic space in Hollywood—constituted the new scheme’s building block. Denari, with Duks Koschitz as project architect, gave each agent a window office at the floor’s perimeter—just a thin wall away from the corresponding assistant in one of the open workstations clustered in the central space. The program called for meeting rooms, as well as an 80-seat theater at grade, where Endeavor could invite clients for private screenings. Accessed through a streetfront facade of glass and anodized aluminum, this small theater and its lobby comprise 6,100 square feet (bringing the total area to 70,000 square feet). Behind the glazing, a curvy, seemingly folded white wall baffles the entry. Updating the original structure’s bland, corporate, 1960s Modernism, the facade recalls Rodeo Drive’s boutiques, several blocks away.

Upstairs, glass doors off the elevator lobby set the scene, introducing a white, luminous space that feels buoyant. A reception desk fronted with translucent, honeycombed polycarbonate panels, holding dashes of fluorescent lights, establishes an edgy elegance. Just beyond it, a dramatic staircase sweeps up through the structural grid to the duplex’s upper level.

Want the full story? Read the entire article in our September 2005 issue.
Subscribe to Architectural Record in print, or get Architectural Record digitally

Read more about the people and products behind this project.