Second Home Hollywood Office / Selgascano

Architects: selgascano
Area: 40340 ft²
Year: 2019
Photographs: Iwan Baan
Lead Architects: José Selgas, Lucía Cano
Project Team: Diego Cano-Lasso, María Levene, Inés Olavarrieta, Paolo Tringali, Sixto Cordero, Víctor Jiménez, Sara Ouass, Pilar Cano-Lasso, Catalina Vázquez, Juan José Muñoz Muñoz, Julian Ocampo, Juan Saez Pedraja
Client: Second Home
Structural Engineering: Walter P.Moore
Mechanic Engineering: Henderson Engineers INC
Interior Design: selgascano
Landscaping: Selgascano / Second Home
Civil Engineering: KPFF Consulting Engineers
Lighting & Furniture Design: Alejandro Cano
City: Los Ángeles
Country: United States

Second Home Hollywood, designed by Selgascano, is located in East Hollywood on a 90,800 square-foot site. The project features 60 oval-shaped individual offices and meeting rooms surrounded by a lush garden. The site also includes a preserved building designed in 1964 by Paul Williams, which serves as the core and main entrance. This project emphasizes outdoor spaces, integrating the office environment with nature. With over 10,000 plants and a focus on sustainability, the design replaces 90,800 square feet of hardscape with 70,000 square feet of landscape, transforming a former parking lot into a vibrant garden.

Second home hollywood office / selgascano

The new Second Home in Hollywood, known as holLA, is a blend of various elements that make up a quintessential California Cocktail. Located in East Hollywood on a 90,800-square-foot site, holLA includes two existing buildings, one of which has been preserved—a two-story structure designed in 1964 by Paul Williams, the first acclaimed African-American architect in Los Angeles.

This building features a classic Neocolonial Los Angeles design and serves as the central hub and main entrance for the entire campus. The ground floor houses 320 roaming workspaces, while the first floor contains additional offices with 200 workstations. The building also includes various common facilities, such as a café, bar, restaurant, event and conference halls, resting areas, and open terraces surrounding the structure.

The other building was demolished, and in its place, 60 new oval-shaped individual offices and meeting rooms were constructed atop the existing underground parking. These offices are surrounded by a garden and serve as the Second Home for nearly 700 people. The 60 bungalow offices, in four different sizes, are scattered throughout the garden, which is built with four feet of soil over the parking slab, embedding the bungalows to table height. The transparent curved walls provide 360º views of the surrounding plants, creating the sensation of working within nature.

In this project, the interior spaces are intentionally understated, with the primary emphasis placed on the outdoors, which is central to the Los Angeles lifestyle. At Second Home Hollywood, rather than bringing the garden into the office, the office has been integrated into the garden. Sixty single-story, stand-alone offices are situated in the garden of the Paul Williams building, with these “office pots” surrounded by planters filled with over 10,000 plants and trees. Butterflies, ants, bees, squirrels, and humans all coexist in this natural setting. Wooden and concrete paths meander through the garden, flanked by plants on either side, creating a year-round floral experience. As the saying goes, “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, and then make a change.”

Second Home Hollywood offers office workers a unique experiment in daily coexistence with nature. This integration with the natural world is just one step toward a more sustainable lifestyle. The plants help cool the environment and provide shade, while the transparent façade reduces the need for artificial lighting and includes three operable openings for natural cross-ventilation. All water on-site is captured in two cisterns with a total capacity of 37,000 gallons, used for irrigation. The project has transformed 90,800 square feet of hardscape into 70,000 square feet of lush landscape, turning what was once a parking lot into a garden. It stands as one of the few private developments that have returned built-environment space back to the natural environment.