On Monday, July 17th, a group of staff and summer interns from SOM’s Los Angeles office visited Pen Factory, a current project site in Santa Monica, California. The sustainable, adaptive reuse project at Pen Factory is transforming a long-abandoned manufacturing facility into a multi-tenant creative workplace.
SOM Design Director José Luis Palacios, Project Manager Dan Herman, Senior Designer Carlos Madrid, Designer Goldy Lee, and Technical Designer Wesley Bassett led attendees on a tour of the 222,000-square-foot project. The tour included a peek at SOM’s architectural and interior design work for one of Pen Factory’s future tenants, a digital media company that will occupy 78,000 square feet of workspace on two levels. The tour also included a look at Pen Factory’s underground parking facility, a major structural element that made the project feasible given the site’s size constraints and the need for tenant and public parking.? ?
Throughout the tour, leaders and participants discussed the history of the building, which dates to 1956, efforts to preserve and reference its industrial character in the adaptive reuse of the facility, and the design elements of the current project. Work at Pen Factory is expected to be complete in the fall of 2017.