LA Warehouse and Parking Garage Converted Into Innovative Hybrid Timber Structure

A once windowless warehouse and its subterranean parking garage in Los Angles’s Chinatown has been refashioned into 4.5 floors of office space, The Architect’s Newspaper reported (9-18-24). The work of LEVER Architecture features an innovative hybrid structure, a blend of steel beams, concrete, and timber panels.

LEVER has adapted the bones of a former big box retail store and the grid of its underground parking garage, which have been reflected across a new vertical construction. The design hearkens to single-story bowstring truss warehouses with timber roofs.

What sets 843 North Spring Street apart is its hybrid structural system. Together, CLT panels, concrete, and exposed steel columns bear the building’s gravity and seismic loads. The strength of this system accommodates the vastness of the parking structure and open office layouts on the upper levels with no need for a transfer beam, the more traditional support method. By using CLT, the architects were also able to reuse the building’s existing foundation.

The CLT panels, a mix of Douglas fir and spruce pine fir, add a richness to the project. In the open-plan office spaces, the wood was left exposed on the ceiling, giving a domestic appeal to the workspace.

The use of CLT is just one sustainable measure of several taken by the design team. 843 North Spring Street also reclaims and stores rainwater on its roof, where a solar array was installed. A purple pipe system recycles water across the site. All the windows and sliding doors are operable to circulate air.