Eric Owen Moss's New Hayden Tract Project Has Load-Bearing Cacti

Rendering via Eric Owen Moss Architects

Architect Eric Owen Moss continues his makeover of Culver City's Hayden Tract with 3585 Hayden, an adaptive reuse of two old warehouse structures. He's connected the two buildings and added a twisty tower at the eastern edge of the property, on Hayden Avenue, but standing literally out above the rest of the project is the Cactus Tower, a renovation of a 60-year-old steel frame structure that once housed an industrial press, according to the architect's website. The tower was stripped down to its frame and the firm put up a grid of Mexican Fence Post cacti, housed in steel drums that "form the vertical, compressive members of a series of trusses that span the tower. The top chords of the trusses are the T’s, the bottom chords, the cables, and the planter drums are compressed between the two." According to the Architect's Newspaper blog, the tower is meant to be used as a community space for the company in the warehouse.