June 5, 2017

Rockwell Group Converts Former L.A. Radio Studio Into Stylish Co-Working Space

If you truly must work in Los Angeles, the experience is supposed to feel like you really aren’t. And as coworking spaces encroach on the turf of the traditional office, the need to distance them from a coffee-bar atmosphere has grown. Those two conditions—plus a design concept that the Rockwell Group had established at NeueHouse‘s first location, in New York—set the stage for Interior Design Hall of Fame member David Rockwell‘s gutsy mix of mid-century and contemporary elements.

NeueHouse by Rockwell Group. Photography by Emily Andrews.

The L.A. outpost occupies William Lescaze’s 1938 CBS Radio studio, where the pilot of I Love Lucy was filmed. Today, the interior could be mistaken for a luxe hotel lobby. Hair-on-hide rugs, seating in leather and polished chrome, and polished steel chandeliers with glass globes fill the 70,000 square feet—not a water cooler in sight. Wall surfaces alternate between board-formed concrete and raw oak planks.

As at most coworking concerns, there are conference rooms. Here, however, the ante is upped with a screening room that evokes bygone Tinseltown glamour. “We kept the DNA of the building but re-envisioned it as a new kind of creative hub,” Rockwell says. Think of it as a cultural and social center that doubles as a place to get stuff done. Membership in the working class has never seemed so… Hollywood.

NeueHouse by Rockwell Group. Photography by Emily Andrews.
NeueHouse by Rockwell Group. Photography by Emily Andrews.
NeueHouse by Rockwell Group. Photography by Emily Andrews.

> See more from the May 2017 issue of Interior Design

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