LEVER Architecture

Located on a busy urban intersection in Los Angeles's Chinatown, 843 N Spring Street represents a new approach to office buildings by taking advantage of the city's distinctive climate and landscape. The project transforms a windowless retail warehouse trom the 1980s, with a parking garage below, by adding a new structure on top. This results in one of the first and largest hybrid CLT buildings in the city. The building is a combination of LA's high-rise towers and the low-rise bow truss warehouse culture, utilizing a material palette that includes mass timber, steel, and concrete.

The landscape design, developed in collaboration with Field Operations, embraces the city's mild climate, maximizing outdoor spaces and creating a public landscape that serves as a new urban amenity for the city. The floor plan integrates outdoor workspaces and biophilic design, offering access to the landscape on every level.

For more information about this project, please visit: https://leverarchitecture.com/projects/843_n_spring_street

Photo credits: © Jeremy Bittermann / JBSA
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LEVER designed CASCADA as a hybrid mass timber boutique hotel and spa that proposes a new urban model for an all-inclusive luxury hotel experience. Integrated within Portland's Alberta Arts community, the building's massing breaks down overall scale to reinforce connections to the active neighborhood streetscape. The program includes hotel, restaurant, wellness-oriented health facilities, leasable ground-level retail spaces, and below-grade parking.

The wellness program occupies three floors and includes hammam-inspired bath and steam rooms, a swimming pool, reception, gym, and treatment rooms. Upper levels contain 100 hotel units designed with simplicity and efficiency in mind, while the second floor incorporates an indoor and outdoor dining terrace, workspaces, conference rooms, and a bridge leading to the spa reception. The LEED Platinum design emphasizes wellness and sustainability through mass timber, low-carbon concrete, stormwater reuse, high-performance glazing, solar panels, energy-efficient systems, and biophilic design elements distributed throughout the building.

For more information about this project, please visit: https://leverarchitecture.com/projects/cascada

Photo credits: Ema Peter Photography
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LEVER designed Thesis Headquarters as a mass timber office building in Portland's Slabtown neighborhood. The building is organized around collaboration, with an all-hands space at ground level that supports meetings, gatherings, and shared use by employees. Office spaces are distributed across multiple levels and connected through a series of interior and exterior areas described on the website as "mid-door" spaces.

The building is constructed using a custom mass timber structural system composed of Cross-Laminated Timber panels with glulam columns and beams prefabricated by Timberlab. The use of regional mass timber is central to the building's construction approach. The project is designed to achieve LEED Gold certification, incorporating daylighting, efficient building systems, and on-site solar panels.

For more information about this project, please visit: https://leverarchitecture.com/projects/thesis_headquarters

Photo credits: © Lara Swimmer / Esto
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