The Press

A former printing and distribution facility for the Los Angeles Times, The Press has been reimagined as a creative campus which has become the corporate headquarters of Anduril Industries. The reinvention, completed in 2021, brings in natural light and views while keeping the building’s unusual floor-to-floor heights and much of its existing structure. The approach is cost-conscious but provocative. The campus has since expanded with a new standalone Research and Development building to accommodate Anduril’s specialized engineering, fabrication, testing, and workplace functions alongside the adaptive reuse campus. The result is a rich, humanized campus: a living monument to an ever-evolving culture.

The design interventions are selectively subtractive. Treating the building as a kind of “ruin,” the design surgically removes roof and concrete wall panels to expose the skeletal structure. Defining elements such as the canopies and monolithic concrete walls stay in place, celebrating the character of the industrial space.

Indoor-outdoor connections run throughout the tenant spaces. Loading docks and canopy overhangs become continuous back porches for reflection, fitness, and collaboration. Landscape ties site and structure together, with trees and plants unexpectedly piercing canopy openings and the roofs of former mechanical rooms. The effect suggests a ruin reclaimed by nature, signaling new life. Space for machines becomes space for people, as the leviathan volumes that once held printing presses become cathedral-like workplaces.

An open-air atrium inserted into the central press line heightens the arrival experience and encourages chance encounters where circulation paths cross. A Skycut slices across the building, bringing in daylight and creating a pedestrian route through the site.