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(W)rapper Tower / Eric Owen Moss Architects

(W)rapper Tower / Eric Owen Moss Architects

American architect Eric Owen Moss has completed the (W)rapper office tower in Los Angeles, which was named for a structural support system that covers the facade.
Moss, who leads Eric Owen Moss Architects and has been planning the tower for decades, recently completed the 235-foot (72 metres) structure in Los Angeles.
The tower is roughly T-shaped in plan, with a rectangular primary volume – curved on one end – that holds most of the usable floor space, and an externalized core that holds the primary circulation and additional rooms.
Its exterior is a mixture of glass and steel support structures that out extend from I beams in the internal plates, across the facade and down to isolators below ground level.
The wraps were clad with fireproof cementitious plaster grey in colour. An external staircase made from the same materials zigzags up one side of the structure, blending in with the structural wraps.
The structural steel and externalized core allow for the floorplans to be column-free and give it an earthquake-resistant rating "five times the conventional seismic criteria" according to Moss.