Los Angeles, California, USA

At the heart of Century City, the revitalized Century Plaza project builds on the original vision of Minoru Yamasaki by complementing his iconic twin office towers and original Century Plaza hotel with a new set of twin residential towers and a sequence of richly landscaped open spaces. Together these new components strengthen the identity of Century Plaza and create a lively, eventful, and memorable urban scene, enhancing the quality of public space and public life.

Century Plaza by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects, received an 2025 International Architecture Honourable Mention from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.

The design extends and dramatizes the visual axis established by the orientation of Yamasaki’s twin office towers toward his earlier hotel. Along this central axis through the property, a new sequence of spaces constitute Century Plaza’s most important contribution to the public realm. These spaces include a new Avenue of the Stars Entry Plaza; the Lobby Breezeway, a loggia-like central gathering place; the Gardens of Century Plaza, a landscaped public square surrounded by retail shops at plaza level and the podium gardens above; Constellation Plaza, providing access to the lower level of retail shops; and the continuation of retail frontage east along Constellation Boulevard, terminating at the proposed entrance to the future Metro Purple Line station, where a circular retail pavilion defines a small pocket park surrounded by a sweeping water wall.

Although modest in size—about two acres—this carefully crafted sequence of public spaces is bold in its ambitions, intended to create an urban scene of a quality rarely encountered in the contemporary city. Care has been taken to ensure that the Century Plaza development, while announced on the skyline by the new twin towers that comprise the bulk of the new program area, does not overwhelm the new urban spaces that surround them at street level. The new towers rise from a richly detailed, stone-clad podium of lower buildings animated by shops and cafés, shaping public space at a scale sympathetic and inviting to pedestrians. Extensively landscaped roof gardens capping the podium buildings define a distinct realm for the residents of Century Plaza and are one of the many features that make the project a model of sustainable practice in urban redevelopment.

Architects: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects LLP.
Design Team: Craig N. Dumas, Min Lee, Roy G. Barris, Que Ranne Rhee, Michael Lyon, Keunsook Suk, and Henry N. Cobb
Associate Architects: Harley Ellis Devereaux
General Contractor: Webcor
Client: Next Century Associates, LLC.
Photographers: Eric Staudenmaier