Los Angeles (January 9, 2003) – Construction has commenced on the main plaza at the Pacific Design Center and is scheduled to be completed this Spring. Designed by landscape architect Thomas Balsley and Associates, and water feature designers, Fluidity Design Consultants, Inc. , the plaza will be known as Pacific Design Plaza and will create a grand, landscaped plaza and main entrance to the Pacific Design Center.
Pacific Design Plaza provides shaded amphitheater lawn terraces for outdoor seating for the adjacent MOCA gallery. A palm-lined promenade and central water feature leads visitors into the plaza and pool in between dramatic colors of ornamental and succulent floral beds. The Pacific Design Center’s public presence has been redefined, creating a space to accommodate a variety of activities using water, lawns, trees, seasonal color, lighting and seating. The new design transforms a formerly inaccessible open space into an exciting new venue. Special events may now take place against the backdrop of an interactive water fountain as its centerpiece. This bold new design re-introduces Pacific Design Center to the local community with its generous lawn areas and park-like setting.
“Pacific Design Plaza is just one of the many innovative changes underway at Pacific Design Center,” said Pacific Design Center president Charles S. Cohen. Our consultants have done a spectacular job of bringing the vision we have for PDC to life” he added.
Designer Jim Garland of Fluidity Design Consultants, Inc., has over 20 years of experience in water design. While at Wet Design Jim designed and directed a wide range of innovative water features, consulting to several of the world’s most respected architectural practices. During this period his work helped make significant contributions to the redefinition of the field with new ideas and techniques, enhancing synergies between water and architecture.
The new water fountain will highlight a circular 90-foot pool with a center, smaller triangular figure serving as an illuminating wellspring for heroic 60-foot jets periodically launched in varying geometries of clustered streamers will at night, illuminate in color on the walls of the water reprise the dramatic blue, red and green of the Pacific Design Center’s trademark architectural forms.
The plaza will also feature linear fountains whose “levitating” edgeless black pool offers a drum-head-like polished water surface with a finely detailed infinity edge continuous around its entire perimeter. The linear fountain pool contains newly developed pulse nozzles, which generate tsunami-style ring waves. The underwater shafts of the pulse nozzles are custom designed in colored glass panels, internally illuminated to form underwater lanterns. The colors of the underwater lanterns are, of course, blue, green and red.
Complementing Pacific Design Plaza will be a thirty-foot high, stainless steel architectural scale sculpture, created by renowned design firm Selbert Perkins Design. “The Scale” will be used as a landmark gateway and way finding monument for the PDC, and will join Selbert Perkins’ recently installed sculptures of a chair, “Seat of Design”, and a lamp, “Illuminating Design”, which anchor the east and west corners of the PDC off Melrose Avenue.
The architecturally distinctive Pacific Design Center, established in 1975, is the leading source for regional fine, traditional and contemporary contract and residential furniture, fabrics, architectural products, floor coverings, wall coverings, lighting, kitchen and bath products and accessories. With more than 130 showrooms and 2,100 interior product lines, the PDC regularly sells to professional interior designers, architects, facility, managers, decorators and dealers. PDC recently added contemporary dining elegance with the opening of ASTRA West in this past summer.
Pacific Design Center is located at 8687 Melrose Ave. in West Hollywood, CA. For more information call 310-289-6200 or 310-657-0800
