National Museum of African American History and Culture designer David Adjaye’s first project in California will be at a surprising location: The Beverly Center.
Adjaye is designing an 11,000-square-foot store for The Webster, a “luxury multi-brand retailer,” that sells high-end apparel. Adjaye has designed a number of other stores across the globe, including two stunning spaces in historic buildings in New York for designer Proenza Schouler and a ground-up space for the Aishti Foundation, a collection of bars and in Beirut.
Adjaye’s addition—said to be pink and concrete—to the nearly 900,000-square-foot Beverly Center could draw attention to the indoor mall, which opened in 1982 and has struggled to stay relevant.
Last year, the hulking center completed a mullti-year, $500-million makeover that promised to bring in more natural light and add top-notch eateries in lieu of the traditional food court. (Plans to add a trendy food hall were put on hold earlier this year.) Most of those upgrades altered the inside of the mall, not its exterior.
In a statement, Adjaye says The Webster founder Laure Heriard Dubreuil “gave us a lot of freedom and was very trusting throughout the process which yielded a distinctive form that she can be free with to re-sculpt for various collections or new art programming.”
Recent site photos show the lower portion of the existing facade has been opened up, and the interiors have been taken down to the studs. Adjaye is designing the new facade and the store’s interiors. The flagship store will have a dedicated entrance and its own private valet parking, and is scheduled to open in January 2020.
Though he’s only just arriving in California, Adjaye, whose practice is based in London with offices in New York and Accra, Ghana, has been active on the East Coast. Adjaye led the team that designed the award-winning Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC His first New York City skyscraper is under construction now.
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