© OMA

Caltrans District 7 HQ

It is hard to imagine a public entity more important to the City of Los Angeles - both in its physical development as well as to the imagination and shaping of a coherent vision of the city's future - than CalTrans. At the same time, current working conditions are debased, outdated and completely at odds with the mission and working methods of the department. CalTrans deserves a building that not only performs to the highest standards of the contemporary office building, but which also represents a creative reflection of CalTrans' role in shaping the future of the city.

We have engineered the new CalTrans Headquarters to perform a number of architectural feats within the most compact and economical envelope possible. The basic concept of the CalTrans HQ is to combine this rigorous approach to economy in a generic office space that has a number of specific spaces and features distributed throughout the building.