Exterior of the Robert Day Sciences Center at Claremont McKenna College
(Photo illustration by Josep Prat Sorolla / For The Times; photograph by Laurian Ghinitoiu)
7 best L.A. architecture projects of 2025
- Share via
With the long-awaited openings of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries, next year in Los Angeles is shaping up to be the year of the cultural megaproject. But 2025 — in which new buildings have been overshadowed by those destroyed in the region’s devastating fires — should not be overlooked.
Few of the structures below have made headlines, but all expertly embody the best of Los Angeles area architecture: beautiful experiment, well-earned edge and an uncanny sense of the future. Some introduce us to fresh types of architecture, from micro-scaled production studios to a school completed in just two months. Others employ innovative construction systems, like heroically shifted floorplates or floors hung via steel rods. However, this is still sensitive design: tuned into how a building makes you feel, not just how it looks; cognizant of the role a structure’s history can play in both shaping perception and inspiring new creativity; and focused, via connectivity and public space, on making better places, not just better buildings.
Showing Place Places
Robert Day Sciences Center at Claremont McKenna College, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)
Claremont College or University
Starchitect Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG have tried to build in Los Angeles for about a decade — another project had long been stalled by approval processes. They’ve finally pulled it off with this extraordinary campus within a campus at Claremont McKenna College, merging the school’s life science, computer science and data science programs and creating a new academic and social hub for the entire school.
BIG’s specialty is making immensely complex structures seem simple. Here, they laid out two parallel volumes and rotated the middle floor, like a Rubik’s cube, orienting each level to a different part of campus while carving out a cavernous main atrium, prow-like balconies and clear connections through virtually every part of the building.
Each floor has become a bridge above the next, supported by what BIG associate Aran Coakley calls “heroic” triangular steel trusses, clad inside the facility with blond Douglas fir and outside with cast-in-place concrete. The result is an explosion of column-free, flexible spaces that raise your eyes, and your spirit. The sense of place is emphatically punctuated by artist Damián Ortega’s “Magnetic Field,” a hanging re-creation of Earth’s magnetosphere, composed of 18 metal rings and over 1,400 colorful glass spheres.
The magnetic reference is fitting even outside of this science context. Robert Day gives Claremont McKenna’s long, narrow campus a much-needed center of gravity along its east edge. (Soon to be complemented by an adjacent new sports complex, also designed by BIG.) The center, which has enabled the creation of an entire new department, Integrated Sciences, widens the perception of a college known particularly for its economics and public affairs programs into a progressive center for all sciences.
BIG’s specialty is making immensely complex structures seem simple. Here, they laid out two parallel volumes and rotated the middle floor, like a Rubik’s cube, orienting each level to a different part of campus while carving out a cavernous main atrium, prow-like balconies and clear connections through virtually every part of the building.
Each floor has become a bridge above the next, supported by what BIG associate Aran Coakley calls “heroic” triangular steel trusses, clad inside the facility with blond Douglas fir and outside with cast-in-place concrete. The result is an explosion of column-free, flexible spaces that raise your eyes, and your spirit. The sense of place is emphatically punctuated by artist Damián Ortega’s “Magnetic Field,” a hanging re-creation of Earth’s magnetosphere, composed of 18 metal rings and over 1,400 colorful glass spheres.
The magnetic reference is fitting even outside of this science context. Robert Day gives Claremont McKenna’s long, narrow campus a much-needed center of gravity along its east edge. (Soon to be complemented by an adjacent new sports complex, also designed by BIG.) The center, which has enabled the creation of an entire new department, Integrated Sciences, widens the perception of a college known particularly for its economics and public affairs programs into a progressive center for all sciences.
Show more Show less
Member Exclusive
Plan Your L.A. Day
Log in or register for a free account to save L.A. Times recommendations for restaurants, hikes, entertainment and more — all in one place.
Long Beach Airport Updates (Corgan and Studio One Eleven)
Long Beach Airport
Thanks in large part to local firm Studio One Eleven, which has been working at the facility since 2010, Long Beach Airport feels more like a neighborhood than the typical impersonal complex. It’s connected to the city’s culture and history via stores and restaurants that are from the area, and it offers a mix of human-scale public spaces, including outdoor (yes, outdoor!) dining, seating and greenery.
The firm’s most recent phase of design includes the restoration of the airport’s original main terminal, a Streamline Moderne masterpiece by William Horace Austin and Kenneth Smith Wing, which now contains rental car counters and airport administration. The firm has revived its mesmerizing architectural details — like porthole windows, abstract panels and curved railings, and uncovered Grace Clements’ gorgeous, delightfully quirky floor mosaics (featuring over 1.6 million tiles forming oil derricks, seagulls and other local themes), which were hidden for decades. Behind the building, Studio One Eleven has transformed what had been a mess of baggage handling areas, trailers and tall fences into a vibrant new greeting plaza, reconnecting to the rest of the airport and restoring clear access (and views) to Austin and Wing’s building — which itself has been decluttered of visible air conditioning units, conduit, lighting and more. “It just wasn’t the centerpiece anymore,” says Studio One Eleven partner Michael Bohn, of the beloved terminal before the renovation, which also included seismic upgrades.
The plaza, softened with curved wood benches, palm trees and shrubs, is energized below by supersized etched letters spelling out “LONG BEACH” — a reference to a similar graphic that once graced the airport’s tarmac — and above by cylindrical LED string lights, which evoke those that line the runways. While the airport now features modern concourses and ticketing areas by HOK and Corgan, Studio One Eleven has helped it keep the charm and accessibility that have always made it a welcome antidote to LAX’s madness.
The firm’s most recent phase of design includes the restoration of the airport’s original main terminal, a Streamline Moderne masterpiece by William Horace Austin and Kenneth Smith Wing, which now contains rental car counters and airport administration. The firm has revived its mesmerizing architectural details — like porthole windows, abstract panels and curved railings, and uncovered Grace Clements’ gorgeous, delightfully quirky floor mosaics (featuring over 1.6 million tiles forming oil derricks, seagulls and other local themes), which were hidden for decades. Behind the building, Studio One Eleven has transformed what had been a mess of baggage handling areas, trailers and tall fences into a vibrant new greeting plaza, reconnecting to the rest of the airport and restoring clear access (and views) to Austin and Wing’s building — which itself has been decluttered of visible air conditioning units, conduit, lighting and more. “It just wasn’t the centerpiece anymore,” says Studio One Eleven partner Michael Bohn, of the beloved terminal before the renovation, which also included seismic upgrades.
The plaza, softened with curved wood benches, palm trees and shrubs, is energized below by supersized etched letters spelling out “LONG BEACH” — a reference to a similar graphic that once graced the airport’s tarmac — and above by cylindrical LED string lights, which evoke those that line the runways. While the airport now features modern concourses and ticketing areas by HOK and Corgan, Studio One Eleven has helped it keep the charm and accessibility that have always made it a welcome antidote to LAX’s madness.
Show more Show less
Malibu High School (Koning Eizenberg Architects and NAC Architecture)
Malibu High School
(Here And Now Agency, courtesy of KoningEizenberg Architecture and NAC Architecture)
Many of the Los Angeles area’s new public school buildings feel blocky, institutional and aloof. This project, created in part by Koning Eizenberg Architects, which regularly injects humanity into what can be utilitarian spaces, is the opposite. The building is boldly shaped by its raw, fire-prone setting while at the same time designed to be warm, open and flexible, with a porous, subtly unfinished quality that promotes experiment. Koning Eizenberg partner Nathan Bishop calls it a “laboratory on the hill.”
The two-story edifice is clad in a robust combination of textured concrete and copper fins, which have already weathered to the point that they feel part of the place. So does the drought-resistant landscaping, by Spurlock Landscape Architects, which both protects the school’s perimeter and enlivens its large outdoor courtyards. To provide a backup to Malibu’s notoriously unreliable electric grid, the firm installed a canopy of off-set photovoltaic panels, which form rhythmic patterns while also providing much-needed shade in and around the complex.
The H-shaped building is organized via two academic “bars” linked by long, light-filled commons. Instead of the typical separation of uses, each department is spread evenly around the school, blending learning rather than siloing it. “Wherever you go in the building, all of the above is available,” says Bishop. Strategic cuts between levels — striking double-height voids, staggered atria, open stairs — allow views between floors and across programs, while sliding walls, breakout zones and outdoor classrooms further dissolve boundaries.
The two-story edifice is clad in a robust combination of textured concrete and copper fins, which have already weathered to the point that they feel part of the place. So does the drought-resistant landscaping, by Spurlock Landscape Architects, which both protects the school’s perimeter and enlivens its large outdoor courtyards. To provide a backup to Malibu’s notoriously unreliable electric grid, the firm installed a canopy of off-set photovoltaic panels, which form rhythmic patterns while also providing much-needed shade in and around the complex.
The H-shaped building is organized via two academic “bars” linked by long, light-filled commons. Instead of the typical separation of uses, each department is spread evenly around the school, blending learning rather than siloing it. “Wherever you go in the building, all of the above is available,” says Bishop. Strategic cuts between levels — striking double-height voids, staggered atria, open stairs — allow views between floors and across programs, while sliding walls, breakout zones and outdoor classrooms further dissolve boundaries.
Show more Show less
Thoughts on our guides? Let’s hear it!
We’re gathering feedback on how our guides can better serve you and help you find the next great restaurant, hike or activity in Los Angeles.
Anderson Towers (Montalba Architects)
Century City Commercial Building
(Kevin Scott)
This refresh of the lobbies and public areas for Century City’s Anderson Towers — 1800 and 1900 Avenue of the Stars — transforms two dark, aloof midcentury slabs into warm, luminous spaces unified by material, landscape and a sense of openness. “They were in a very hard way,” says David Montalba, founder of Montalba Architects. “We wanted to respect their modernist roots but transform them and bring them to a new generation.”
Some of the major moves were straightforward: The firm replaced the glass on the first and second floors, refinished their aluminum panels, and shaded them via an aluminum brow (at 1800) and a cantilevered steel and frosted glass canopy (at 1900). Others were more prodigious: shifting the exterior support rods from which 1800’s second floor hangs to accommodate façade changes and demolishing the single-story pavilion fronting 1900 to carve out more public space. Both ground level frontages are now unified with rows of white concrete-clad columns.
Inside, a confusing warren of internal spaces have been simplified, with small informal nooks that feel connected to the whole. All have been clad with tactile elements that echo the project’s new landscape outside: travertine walls, terrazzo floors, concrete-wrapped columns, concrete planters and blond timber ceiling strips. The landscape, designed by OJB, features a flowing collection of peaceful outdoor areas subtly divided by soft berms, craggy trees, thick grasses and meadows of wildflowers.
“The idea was to literally pull the gardens and the light through the lobby,” says Montalba, who describes his firm’s approach as “humanist.” The sense of openness goes vertically too. The firm cut large openings leading to the buildings’ underground parking, introducing natural light and the same elegant palette. Adding an organic exclamation mark at 1900 is a felled wood reception desk that was rhythmically hand carved by artisan Alison Crowther and her team.
Some of the major moves were straightforward: The firm replaced the glass on the first and second floors, refinished their aluminum panels, and shaded them via an aluminum brow (at 1800) and a cantilevered steel and frosted glass canopy (at 1900). Others were more prodigious: shifting the exterior support rods from which 1800’s second floor hangs to accommodate façade changes and demolishing the single-story pavilion fronting 1900 to carve out more public space. Both ground level frontages are now unified with rows of white concrete-clad columns.
Inside, a confusing warren of internal spaces have been simplified, with small informal nooks that feel connected to the whole. All have been clad with tactile elements that echo the project’s new landscape outside: travertine walls, terrazzo floors, concrete-wrapped columns, concrete planters and blond timber ceiling strips. The landscape, designed by OJB, features a flowing collection of peaceful outdoor areas subtly divided by soft berms, craggy trees, thick grasses and meadows of wildflowers.
“The idea was to literally pull the gardens and the light through the lobby,” says Montalba, who describes his firm’s approach as “humanist.” The sense of openness goes vertically too. The firm cut large openings leading to the buildings’ underground parking, introducing natural light and the same elegant palette. Adding an organic exclamation mark at 1900 is a felled wood reception desk that was rhythmically hand carved by artisan Alison Crowther and her team.
Show more Show less
LAX Metro Transit Center (Grimshaw and Gruen Associates)
Westchester Metro station
(Sam Lubell)
Accommodating Metro’s C and K lines, 16 bus bays, a bike hub and a new airport people mover (which officials hope to open by June) — this $900-million (thanks largely to an L.A. County bond), 11-acre facility is designed to be the car-free gateway for perpetually traffic-choked LAX. Grimshaw partner Andrew Byrne calls it “the front door into Los Angeles.” Indeed, its rolling, two-story concrete and steel form, extending more than 1,100 feet from end to end, is proudly mammoth. It’s a muscular concrete and steel landmark celebrating what the city hopes will be a new transit-filled age. Instead of hiding its guts behind cladding, as so many public buildings do, it celebrates its raw structure. By spotlighting its functional elements, it brings to mind L.A.’s herculean freeway infrastructure.
Despite all this bulk, it’s light and lacy too, thanks to a layered composition of fritted skylights — creating soft light and dappled shadows — fanning canopies, translucent screens and rhythmic beams that both shade passengers and frame views of the area. They also allow the vast majority of the complex to remain open to the elements, no air conditioning needed. In some spots, the building evokes a living creature: Panels curve in on themselves like taught muscles, beams resemble vertebrae. Wide stairs and escalators, arching up from the bus plaza’s protective canopies, create a grand sense of procession, while roomy concourses are a welcome addition.
In some ways it feels like a bit much for the number of Metro lines and buses it serves; but if this encourages more people to take transit to the airport, it will be worth it. The public bus plaza adjacent to the ground level is a comfortable spot, but it’s not as magnetic as the building itself. Metro has never been expert at celebrating the spaces outside of its stations.
Despite all this bulk, it’s light and lacy too, thanks to a layered composition of fritted skylights — creating soft light and dappled shadows — fanning canopies, translucent screens and rhythmic beams that both shade passengers and frame views of the area. They also allow the vast majority of the complex to remain open to the elements, no air conditioning needed. In some spots, the building evokes a living creature: Panels curve in on themselves like taught muscles, beams resemble vertebrae. Wide stairs and escalators, arching up from the bus plaza’s protective canopies, create a grand sense of procession, while roomy concourses are a welcome addition.
In some ways it feels like a bit much for the number of Metro lines and buses it serves; but if this encourages more people to take transit to the airport, it will be worth it. The public bus plaza adjacent to the ground level is a comfortable spot, but it’s not as magnetic as the building itself. Metro has never been expert at celebrating the spaces outside of its stations.
Show more Show less
Palisades High School conversion (Gensler)
Santa Monica High School
(Gensler)
This conversion of the long-dormant 1947 Sears Building in Santa Monica into a temporary home for Pali High has become a symbol of how to get things back to normal quickly after the tragic January fires. In just two months — a miracle in an age when just pulling permits can take longer — a team led by Gensler worked day and night, with a minuscule budget of about $10 million. The team first met in late February, and by mid-March they had put together preliminary plans, negotiated a lease, firmed up permits and started construction. “No one ever stopped from that point on,” says Pam Magee, Pali High’s principal. School opened on April 22.
Construction crews from C.W. Driver worked in two shifts, from 5 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. every day, putting in dry wall, ventilation, furniture, sound protection, carpeting, furniture, lighting and mechanical systems, all enlivened with giant super graphics and centered around a skylit atrium that had been carved out by the site’s owners, Seritage Growth Properties and Invesco. “The mantra was ‘every day is three days,’” says Kelly Farrell, a principal at Gensler.
This is not meant to be a model for permanent schools. Due to time and budget constraints, the team couldn’t put doors on classrooms, walls don’t reach the ceiling (although soundstage-style acoustic blankets successfully cut the noise) and bathrooms are in temporary facilities in the parking lot. But it’s a surprisingly uplifting symbol of efficiency and effectiveness in a time when both are in extremely short supply.
Construction crews from C.W. Driver worked in two shifts, from 5 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. every day, putting in dry wall, ventilation, furniture, sound protection, carpeting, furniture, lighting and mechanical systems, all enlivened with giant super graphics and centered around a skylit atrium that had been carved out by the site’s owners, Seritage Growth Properties and Invesco. “The mantra was ‘every day is three days,’” says Kelly Farrell, a principal at Gensler.
This is not meant to be a model for permanent schools. Due to time and budget constraints, the team couldn’t put doors on classrooms, walls don’t reach the ceiling (although soundstage-style acoustic blankets successfully cut the noise) and bathrooms are in temporary facilities in the parking lot. But it’s a surprisingly uplifting symbol of efficiency and effectiveness in a time when both are in extremely short supply.
Show more Show less
Lighthouse Venice (Warkentin Associates)
Venice Business
(Yoshihiro Makino/Warkentin Associates)
As traditional Hollywood studios appear to be in free fall, the Lighthouse — launched by the quickly growing “creator agency” Whalar Group — offers a new template for the creator economy. It’s based not on hulking backlots, soundstages and office complexes, but on a nimble “campus” of co-working and event spaces and small, flexible production facilities for filmmakers, influencers, podcasters and other creative types.
A team led by Warkentin Associates designed the facility within the 1939 Mediterranean Revival Venice Post Office, whose exterior and lobby were restored by developer Allied Commercial with preservation firm Chattel Inc. The terrazzo-filled lobby now serves as a reception area, highlighted by the return of Edward Biberman’s splendidly evocative mural, “Abbot Kinney and the Story of Venice,” which had been saved and restored a few years ago by director Joel Silver. Beyond the lobby, the building’s cavernous concrete spaces have been converted into a series of open gathering and work spaces, naturally lit by large skylights and light wells and warmed by oak floors, soft furnishings and hand-textured surfaces. However, they maintain a raw edge with exposed ducts and wires, black steel panels, metallic pendant lights and concrete framing. Downstairs, the feel is all working studio, with simple hallways lined with black stage flooring filled with flexible production spaces, including editing bays, podcast studios, a test kitchen and maker space.
“No matter what your idea is, you can find a place to do it here,” says Warkentin Associates founder Nathan Warkentin, who compares the upstairs to Wayne Manor and the downstairs to the Batcave.
A team led by Warkentin Associates designed the facility within the 1939 Mediterranean Revival Venice Post Office, whose exterior and lobby were restored by developer Allied Commercial with preservation firm Chattel Inc. The terrazzo-filled lobby now serves as a reception area, highlighted by the return of Edward Biberman’s splendidly evocative mural, “Abbot Kinney and the Story of Venice,” which had been saved and restored a few years ago by director Joel Silver. Beyond the lobby, the building’s cavernous concrete spaces have been converted into a series of open gathering and work spaces, naturally lit by large skylights and light wells and warmed by oak floors, soft furnishings and hand-textured surfaces. However, they maintain a raw edge with exposed ducts and wires, black steel panels, metallic pendant lights and concrete framing. Downstairs, the feel is all working studio, with simple hallways lined with black stage flooring filled with flexible production spaces, including editing bays, podcast studios, a test kitchen and maker space.
“No matter what your idea is, you can find a place to do it here,” says Warkentin Associates founder Nathan Warkentin, who compares the upstairs to Wayne Manor and the downstairs to the Batcave.
Show more Show less
No matching entries.
Please reset filters to see all entries.
No matching entries.
Please reset filters to see all entries.
Updates:
2:30 p.m. Jan. 27, 2026: A previous version of this article stated Aran Coakley is a BIG partner. He is an associate.
5:49 p.m. Dec. 21, 2025: A previous version of this article stated Chattel Inc. restored the exterior and lobby of the Venice Post Office. It was restored by Allied Commercial with Chattel Inc.
10:17 a.m. Dec. 19, 2025: A previous version of this article described Studio One Eleven as the architect on the Long Beach Airport updates. It was Corgan and Studio One Eleven.
9:57 a.m. Dec. 19, 2025: A previous version of this article described Grimshaw as the architect on the LAX Metro Transit Center. It was Grimshaw and Gruen Associates.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Most Read in Entertainment & Arts
Top