Century City’s two apartment towers are located on the Avenue of the Stars at the southern end of a 260-acre site formerly owned by Twentieth Century Fox motion picture studios. They were the first of a large complex of commercial and residential buildings envisioned. The project was begun under William Zeckendorf, but lost to ALCOA before completion. The towers were among the last of a family of architectural concrete residential towers designed by Pei in the late 1950s and early 60s.
The 27-story towers are structurally linked by a shared underground garage with a pool, fountains, and a landscaped plaza on its roof. One of only two luxury residential projects designed by Pei (along with Bushnell Plaza), the towers remain popular among celebrities in Hollywood’s entertainment industry. The rectangular buildings are set at right angles so that their broad and narrow facades play off each other and change with the viewer’s position. Within the general organizational framework, the horizontal grid of floor-to-ceiling windows varies with the alternating length, height, and location of balconies set into the depth of the six-foot-deep grid.
In 1967, the project received the Grand Prix Award from the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
Design Team: I. M. Pei, Design Partner; Kye Lee, Design Architect
I. M. Pei & Associates