Vox at Cumulus

Location: Los Angeles, CA
Award Applicant: TCA Architects
Architect: TCA Architects
Developer/General Contractor: Carmel Partners
Interior Designer: House of Honey
Photographer: VI Photography & Design
Project Website: voxatcumulus.com

Project Statement

Located directly adjacent to the La Cienega/Jefferson Expo Line, Vox at Cumulus is a comprehensive residential and commercial mixed-use project that embodies all the defining characteristics of a Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). The goal of the design is to create a uniquely livable community that reflects the progressive nature of the context and to create places with identity.

The site planning and architecture responds directly to the urban scale, fabric and culture of its surroundings. The master plan is guided by the principles of connectivity and place making. The architecture is inspired by the notions of progress, change and motion.

Vox at Cumulus is a uniquely livable community that embodies the future of urban living. Vox is a seven-story type III podium building of 910 units, with 10,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities that include two resort-style pools and a central park-like setting. The 100,000 square feet of retail space grants shopping and restaurants right on premises. A Whole Foods occupies 50,000 square feet of the main corner’s ground floor retail space.

This project was a great opportunity to create dynamic architecture that contributes to the growing architecture community in Hayden Tract and Culver City. Large-scale massing incorporates two systems to break down the composition and lessen the impact on the smaller-scale immediate context. The two systems appear to intersect or overlap at the main corner of La Cienega and Jefferson Boulevards, near the rail station, and provide a monumental corner.

Articulation studies explored the analogy of dynamic cars or boxes traveling to and fro along the street, as railcars. A second, contrasting system designed for Jefferson Boulevard reinforces the system as another distinct mass, and appears as a second train at this important TOD node, especially to the westward Metro rider viewing the building from its elevated stance.