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Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel Fire Doors and Smoke Curtains

Fire doors and smoke curtains install

There were no shortcuts taken when it came to the Fire Life Safety Doors and Smoke Curtains needed to bring this 1926 California Renaissance Revival building up to code. The Historic Hotel located in Los Angeles’s South Park District was beautifully restored by Local Architect Omgivning and the Interior was envision by de-signer Kelly Wearstler.

Door Systems is humbled to be part of such a prestigious project and especially proud of the Proper Fire Doors and Smoke Curtains that where carefully designed with the AOR. The idea for the Proper Hotels is simple: Provide a hotel experience that offers proper food, proper service, and proper amenities. With that philosophy you can only expect to find the best aesthetics and quality in this boutique hotel.

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ARC US Conference 2022

ARC US Conference 2022

Door Systems was happy to be back to in-person events this past year with ARC US Conference. This prestigious Bond Event brings together America’s Top 100 Principal Architects and Vendors in one place for 4 days and 3 nights.

The experience centers around a series of one-to-one business meetings between architects and vendors, that each have selected ahead of time, this ensures high quality interactions making the best use of the attendee’s time away from the office.

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Tallest towers in San Francisco, mapped

Transamerica pyramid building

The city’s skyline has always been swoon-worthy, but over the last decade, the view has become even more grand—not to mention crowded—as skyscrapers have sprouted taller, taller, and taller. From the Salesforce Tower to 555 California, San Francisco’s high-rises have set examples of height and grandeur. Read more

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History of the Twitter Building

Twitter building in San Fransisco

How the internet reshaped Market Street’s Art Deco monolith

The Twitter building, once known as the Western Furniture Exchange and Merchandise Mart, got its start as a Depression-era furniture showcase

This is a story about adaptive reuse, unplanned obsolescence, and the way one building can straddle two centuries and come to embody the fickle nature of commerce in a modern American city.

The hulking, Mayan-inspired, Art Deco monolith originally known as the Western Furniture Exchange and Merchandise Mart has stood on its Market Street block between Ninth and Tenth streets for 81 years now.

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The most polarizing buildings in San Francisco

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Building

Love ’em or loathe ’em, these structures won’t be ignored

Thom Mayne’s jarring yet alluring Federal Building, an 18-story structure with a curtain of perforated steel punctuated by a large square cut-out framing a privately owned public park, and the Glen Park BART station, a concrete public transportation dream, divide many. Read more

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Union Bank Plaza undergoes $20 million renovation

Renovated Union Bank Plaza in DTLA

The first phase in the historic preservation-minded rehabbing of Union Bank Plaza (UBP) in Downtown Los Angeles has wrapped up. Completed in 1967, the 40-story office tower, designed by Harrison & Abramovitz and Albert C. Martin & Associates in the International style, became the first L.A. skyscraper to be named as a Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) earlier this year by the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission following a unanimous 5–0 vote. The nominating application for HMU designation was put forth by the Los Angeles Conservancy in July 2019.

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Rising Construction Costs

Building construction site

Labor and materials are arguably the two most critical ingredients of any construction project. No buildings transform skylines, no bridges span rivers and no homes rise from foundations without them. That’s why pricing of these two production components can mean cost-cutting is in store for other areas of the job budget or, given steep-enough increases, the scuttling of the project altogether.

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Arts District High Rise Starts Work

SF Arts District Building Construction

San Francisco-based developer Carmel Part­ners has broken ground on its first Arts District project. The planned 35-story project designed by Works Progress Architecture will rise at 520 S. Mateo St., near the Fourth Street Bridge. The main tower will include 475 live/work apartments, including 50 affordable units.

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Hewitt Street Getting a Hotel

New Hotel on Hewitt Street

Yet another hotel has been announced for the Arts District. Hospitality firm the Radisson Hotel Group announced plans to construct a 140-room Radisson RED hotel at 440 S. Hewitt St. A groundbreaking date has not been set, but the company expects it to open in early 2024.

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Anaheim Stadium turned into a mega mixed-use district

Anaheim Stadium

Last Wednesday, the owners of the Anaheim Ducks hopped on the “professional sports team turning the area around their stadium into a mixed-use district” bandwagon with the announcement of “ocV!BE,” a 115-acre neighborhood that will set up shop around the team’s Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

The hockey team’s owners will realize that vision by developing the (currently unused) landscape of surface parking lots around the Honda Center. In return, the Southern California city will receive 2,800 new apartments with 15 percent set aside for affordable housing, 825,000-square-feet of office space, and 30 acres of public green spaces, including a “wellness park.” Read more

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