Fox Plaza (Los Angeles)

Fox Plaza is a 34-story, 493-foot (150 m) skyscraper in Century City, Los Angeles, California.[5] It is owned by the Orange County-based Irvine Company.[6]

Fox Plaza
Alternative names20th Century Fox Plaza
General information
TypeCommercial offices
Architectural stylePostmodern
Location2121 Avenue of the Stars
Century City, Los Angeles, California
Coordinates34.055282°N 118.412804°W / 34.055282; -118.412804
Construction started1985 (1985)
Completed1987
OwnerIrvine Company LLC
Height
Roof150 m (490 ft)
Technical details
Floor count34
Floor area90,115 m2 (969,990 sq ft)
Design and construction
ArchitectJohnson, Fain and Pereira Associates
Structural engineerJohn A. Martin & Associates
Main contractorAl Cohen Construction
References
[1][2][3][4]

History

Completed in 1987, the building's architects were Scott Johnson, Bill Fain, and William L. Pereira.[7] Fox Plaza is the last building that William Pereira worked on before his death in 1985 and he did not live to see it open.

Former US President Ronald Reagan had his offices on the 34th floor of the building for several years after leaving public office.[8] The 34th floor is now occupied by 20th Century Studios.[9]

Design

Outer exterior of the building contains rust-red granite and glass panels.

The Fox plaza building features a unique HVAC system where in the core of the building is located a large vertical air shaft. The air shaft begins below the building, as an outdoor, cooler air intake pushing air to each floor's fan room and eventually reducing in area on upper floors, and on the roof is located an exhaust for stale air. Such system design utilizes stack effect. [10][11]

Filming location

In a 2018 tour for Variety, the chief engineer of the building noted how the Fox Plaza has a large number of redundancies in its design, and he speculates that it's because it was intended as a filming location.[12]

The building has been featured in at least four major motion pictures released by Fox. In the film Die Hard it was portrayed as the fictional Nakatomi Plaza (also known as Nakatomi Tower), a building owned by a fictional Japanese conglomerate. The film entails the building being taken by renegade terrorists intending to steal bearer bonds in the company vault and destroy the building, with the waylaid New York City Police Department officer John McClane working to foil them.[12] Almost the entire film was shot in the plaza, aside from a few scenes showing a Christmas party.[12] The damaged version of the tower was made via a scale model special effect.

The plaza and a neighboring building are the main setting for the rock & roll comedy Airheads. Fox Plaza was also one of the buildings brought down at the end of Fight Club.[13] The building is also used for the corporate offices of Chimera Gas in the surrealistic road movie Motorama and is also portrayed as the headquarters for Spencer Publications on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. The building plays an important role in the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode "99," in which detective Jake Peralta insists on visiting the building due to its role in Die Hard and causes his squad to miss their return flight to New York City.[14]

The exterior of the building was used in the 1987 Charlie Sheen film No Man's Land, in the 2001 episode of The X-Files, "Essence", in the 1989 film Lethal Weapon 2. In the ninth episode of the fifth season of Brooklyn nine - nine titled 99.

See also

References
  1. "Fox Plaza". CTBUH Skyscraper Center.
  2. Fox Plaza at Emporis
  3. "Fox Plaza". SkyscraperPage.
  4. Fox Plaza at Structurae
  5. "Fox Plaza - Office Building for Rent - Los Angeles, CA". www.irvinecompanyoffice.com. Archived from the original on 2018-07-30. Retrieved 2018-07-30.
  6. Company, Irvine. "Irvine Company's Fox Plaza Captures Prestigious Regional Industry Award, Irvine Company". Irvine Company. Archived from the original on 2018-07-30. Retrieved 2018-07-30.
  7. "Fox Plaza: Nice Style, Poor Design". Los Angeles Times. 1987-09-20. ISSN 0458-3035. Archived from the original on 2015-10-17. Retrieved 2018-07-30.
  8. Andy Lewis (26 September 2013). "Inside Ronald Reagan's 'Die Hard' Office in Century City". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  9. "Fox Plaza | Los Angeles Conservancy". www.laconservancy.org. Archived from the original on 2016-07-29. Retrieved 2019-03-21.
  10. "Large-Building HVAC Systems". www.industrial-electronics.com. Retrieved 2021-01-16. An unusual example of vertical air distribution at the core is shown in Fig. 10. The Fox Plaza, Los Angeles, office building's unique features include both fan rooms on each floor and a large central vertical air shaft. This air shaft begins at the bottom as a fresh air intake to each floor and tapers to become, at the top, an exhaust (heated) air outlet from each floor. Thus, the stack effect is utilized to help supply fresh and exhaust stale air from a large building, with help from small supply fans at each floor.
  11. Grondzik, Walter T.; Kwok, Alison G. (2014). Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings (12th ed.). Wiley. pp. 507–509. ISBN 1118615905.
  12. Tapley, Kristopher (2018-07-29). "'Die Hard' Celebrates 30th Anniversary with Outdoor 'Nakatomi Tower' Screening". Variety. Archived from the original on 2018-07-29. Retrieved 2018-07-30.
  13. "The 'Where Is My Mind' Ending Scene in Fight Club (1999) - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2021-01-03.
  14. Ferguson, LaToya. "In Brooklyn Nine-Nine's "99," teamwork makes the dream work". The A.V. Club. Great Hill Partners. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
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