January 4, 2018

InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown by AC Martin: 2017 Best of Year Winner for Large Chain Hotel

It seems like yesterday that David Martin presented journalists with the architectural model for a mixed-use project that would alter the city’s skyline. Martin, then design principal, revealed a tower with a hotel and offices, plus a podium at the bottom, capped by a pool terrace. Years passed, and we monitored progress. By the opening, the next generation—design principal Christopher King, director of design Sandra Lévesque, and project director for interiors Michelle Sterling—had taken over the 110-year-old family firm. This is its first comprehensive hospitality interiors project.

InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown at Wilshire Grand Center by AC Martin. Photography by Eric Laignel.

It includes a street-level entry, a sky lobby up on 70, three restaurants, two ballrooms, a gym, and 899 guest rooms and suites. For sure, figurative conceits were needed to tame the vastness. “Each space has its own personality—like the characters in a movie,” Lévesque says. Sterling adds, “We’re trying to dispel the myth of L.A. as a vast valley with no soul.”

Guests arrive at a porte cochere with a mural that evokes sights from the LAX sign to palm trees. “It’s like driving through L.A. at dusk,” King says. Bona fide blue-chip art follows with the entry’s rainbow wall installation by Doh Ho Suh. Photomurals, a key element in the guest quarters, include an aerial shot of houses and swimming pools that’s been emblazoned with the words California Dreaming.

InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown at Wilshire Grand Center by AC Martin. Photography by Eric Laignel.

Project Team: Christopher C. Martin; Carey McLeod; Tammy Jow; George Vangilluwe; Tim Redmond; Isaac Luna; Peter Kim; Eliza De Dios-Hernandez; Jorge Medrano; Melanie Gutierrez; Grit Leipert; Edmund Lau; Naoko Miyano; Ryan Petersen; Lily Chung; Inga Newsom; Gerardo Ramierz; Min Sung; Joanne Camacho; Rachel Eisner Noel Moreno; Joseph Varholick; Araceli Gomez; Melisa Sharpe; Lalida NakataniGreg Prelogar; Gary Broeker; Kumiko Matsuda; Jessica Houlemard.

InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown at Wilshire Grand Center by AC Martin. Photography by Eric Laignel.
InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown at Wilshire Grand Center by AC Martin. Photography by Eric Laignel.

> See more from the December 2017 issue of Interior Design

> See all 2017 Best of Year winners and honorees

Recent Projects