California Mart, a 13-story complex of apparel showrooms in downtown Los Angeles, undertook a building-wide refurbishing project in the late 90s. Each floor of the Mart is dominated by a niche of fashion industry wholesalers: from children’s wear to intimate apparel. The Mart sought architects to give distinction to each floor, and Messana O’Rorke was commissioned to define the identity of the 10th floor, which houses almost two hundred accessories showrooms.
Within the client’s objectives to “beautify” the floor with a refurbishing that would yield a distinctive “identity” for the accessories vendors, we identified a number of more challenging architectural issues that we were able to probe.