Frank Gehry is designing warehouse-like El Segundo offices

While all eyes are on Frank Gehry’s Sunset Strip megaproject and his Grand Avenue project Downtown, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect has quietly been working on designing hip offices in El Segundo.

The building, Ascend, is a single-story, 80,000-square-foot office space within a six-building office complex called Utah Avenue Campus.

Gehry told the Los Angeles Times that the building is “not architectural in the sense that you are making an architectural statement. It is really creating an environment that energizes and promotes interactivity in a less formal way.”

The building features 24-foot-tall ceilings, glass panel walls, and skylights. There is also 16,000 square feet of outdoor space “for collaboration,” says the release. Instead of being ringed by parking spaces, Ascend will sit atop a parking podium.

Ascend might look a lot like the creative offices in the Arts District that were once factories, but it’s only built to look that way.

Developer NSB Associates decided to demolish the two existing warehouses on the site and start from scratch when the possibility of working with Gehry arose, says the Times.

Though construction is just now beginning, the building is expected to be ready for tenants by the year’s end. JLL's Mike McRoskey, Blake Searles, Evan Moran and Jason Fine are leading the leasing at both the new Ascend building and the Utah Avenue Campus.

Gehry gives a bit of background about the project in a video for Ascend:

• There's another Frank Gehry building going up in town. It's under the radar in El Segundo [LA Times]
• Mapped: Every Building in Los Angeles Designed By Frank Gehry [Curbed LA]
• City Council gives final approval to Frank Gehry-designed Sunset Strip development [Curbed LA]
• Frank Gehry's delayed Grand Avenue Project to finally get underway [Curbed LA]