don't let its meager exterior fool you
this building is home to the most
expensive commercial real estate in the
entire United States the building is
known as one Wilshire Boulevard as you
can see by the name printed on the top
architecturally it's a pretty
nondescript 1960s office building
designed by The Firm Som well that firm
does have some pretty amazing buildings
to their credit I think that most people
would agree this isn't one of them but
in 2013 this building sold for 437
million dollars the 660 dollars per
square foot of leasable space that's by
far the highest price paid of any office
building in Downtown LA
that's a lot of money today it's about
855 dollars per square foot or nine
thousand dollars per square meter but
why would this of all buildings be so
desirable
you'd probably guess that it must be due
to its fantastic location while you'd be
right it's probably not for the reason
that you think
it does have spectacular views but no
better than its neighbors most of these
neighbors are also newer and feature
more traditional amenities what its
location offers and what this building
takes on a paralleled advantage of is
incredible access to the internet
while the internet moves at the speed of
light for processes where even fractions
of a millisecond count physical location
on the globe still matters and for that
one Wilshire is positioned perfectly the
building is what is known as a carrier
Hotel an urban structure that hosts the
servers and equipment that power the
internet
carrier hotels are critical
infrastructure for modern communication
and commerce they're also known as
co-location facilities because they
house networking and Telecommunications
equipment for multiple companies these
facilities provide a secure reliable and
efficient environment for businesses to
house their I.T infrastructure and
connect with other networks so this
building houses the world's largest
telecom companies and the connections to
each other's networks Verizon at T
Sprint international carriers including
China Telecom China Unicom all have
offices and I.T equipment in this
building also other businesses that rely
on critical connections to the web like
Amazon Google and Netflix all call this
building home in total it has 250
network service providers so the
building is important because it houses
nodes on all of these networks but what
is it about this location that makes it
so significant for this work
well carrier hotels are often located in
dense Urban environments where multiple
corporations are located and need
Connections in Downtown LA certainly
fits the bill one mil shirt is ideally
suited to serve the Region's
entertainment media gaming and high-tech
firms along with traditional areas such
as Healthcare finance and higher
education
but this building is also located just
in Linda or much of the Asia's internet
traffic arrives through undersea cables
to serve the North American continent
so connecting directly to this important
exchange allows one Wilshire to maintain
a seamless a connection as possible to
both Asia and the rest of the United
States
further the building's height means that
it has unbroken lines of sight to other
buildings in the area for microwave and
other antennae to connect across
Airwaves it's like a beacon or a
lighthouse with invisible information
streaming in and out of it
it is likely the most connected building
in the world it has thousands and
thousands of little orange cables
running into the building and stopping
on one of its 30 floors the orange color
also Graces the sidewalk outside that's
because La color codes its various
infrastructure networks underground red
for power blue for water orange for
networking and so on and the fact that
this quality of the building above all
else is what it can offer shows a lot
about what we value the role of the city
in contemporary life and how the build
environment serves to support and enable
our lives this marks a significant
difference between the way that we
traditionally think of this city and the
way that it actually works today in the
past visible geographic features were
often the organizers of cities access to
a river for instance meant routes for
transportation power for manufacturing
maybe even sources for food but today
the important infrastructure that powers
the engine of the city is often
invisible
the theorist kazis for Nellis argues
that one wilshere is a major piece of
global economic engine it's part of a
telecommunications economy that recently
supplanted Aerospace is one of the
Region's leading Global Industries and
helped to support the rise of
Hollywood's entertainment economy the
entire system converges in a single-use
vertical Hub centered at one Wilshire a
bland high-rise distinguished only by
the extra large cooling units on its
roof and the proliferation of orange
markings on the surrounding Paving I've
often thought about the movie The Matrix
was in part a critical cautionary tale
of this condition no longer is important
infrastructure marked with Monumental
constructions instead they're buried
underground and hidden from sight The
Matrix tells the tale of what happens if
we are banished forever to this realm
the wachowskis aren't the only ones
using their creative medium to reconcile
this extreme disconnection between our
digital worlds and our physical ones
when we're sort of like inside of these
kinds of impersonal office spaces
aren't we as good as machines at that
point you know I also spoke with Jimenez
Lai who was commissioned by the downtown
Center business improvement district to
communicate the complicated role of the
building and time and space
as a part of that study we wrote a story
about one Wilshire and this story was
represented in the form of not exactly a
comic book but something like a set of
storyboards
Juan Wilshire is a building inside of
the skyline of downtown Los Angeles
which is inside of this window
which is inside of this room
this room is inside of a model which is
inside of a
photo shoot
this photo shoot is inside of a file
which is inside of a computer which is
inside of an office space which is
inside of a file
that is part of a network of files that
is inside of a server
which is inside of a network of servers
that is inside of one Wilshire
audc because these for analysis practice
installed a model of one and Wilshire on
a desert Bluff in the 2006 High Desert
test sites show relocating when Wilshire
to the Mojave Desert underscores the
unstable reconfiguration of space that
Network culture produces one Wiltshire
could be anywhere in Downtown LA in the
desert in your bedroom or the Mariana's
Trench space is something entirely
different to us today
in this sense one Wilshire is an
unlikely Monument it looks like the most
generic office building in the world
maybe one that Neo and the Matrix would
have worked at as Thomas Anderson not as
Neo
but the building obviously isn't just a
monument it's a working piece of
infrastructure there's the densest
access to dark lit fiber in all the
southwestern United States
in order to maintain unbroken access and
to support such a burdensome electrical
load the building has been renovated to
offer high-grade stable utility power
from the LA Department of Water and
Power it has five separate utility power
risers 11 on-site Diesel power
generators and enough fuel storage for
24 hours of continuous operation and of
course there's 24 7 365 days a year
manned security and card control access
on the fourth floor is an area called a
MeetMe room and this is the largest one
in the country a MeetMe room or an MMR
also known as a network access point is
a physical space within a data center or
Carrier hotel where different
telecommunication carriers isps content
providers and other network service
providers come together to interconnect
their networks and exchange traffic it
is a neutral location where carriers can
exchange traffic with each other and
with other network service providers
without the need for costly and
time-consuming direct connections Mimi
rooms are particularly important for
Content providers such as streaming
video companies and social media
platforms which need to ensure that
their content is delivered quickly and
reliably to end users
of course the building didn't start this
way in the 1960s and it took a pretty
interesting road to get here
it was designed in the mid-1960s as a
speculative office building by The Firm
Skidmore Owings and Merrell the building
expresses its frame and offers the type
of open Office environment that was
popular at the time
a regular column grid with a core and as
few other impediments as possible
Furniture does the rest of the work but
this generic architectural space for
activities led to some strange
conditions over time as our work life
took on a life of its own I feel that
the disadvantages are outweighed by the
advantages
like this and it doesn't suit everybody
we go Bureau landshaft where the
scattering of desks you know supposedly
creates territories and humans are doing
this way and then we get like stuff like
action office where we eventually
develop into cubicles where there's like
let's say personal spaces within the
workspaces uh where you kind of like per
like specify and personalize your own
zone of work you know the sterility of
these kinds of drop ceiling
um spaces like every place any place in
this uh of the office environment it
seems that one Wilshire has always had a
crisis of location curiously the
building isn't actually located at the
address one Wilshire Boulevard it
actually sits at 624 South Grand Avenue
when Wilshire was a marketing name
developed afterward Wilshire Boulevard
is an important Avenue connecting long
disparate parts of LA and houses
government and corporate headquarters
the building was originally home to law
offices and today there's still a few
left over but by the 1990s people were
moving out the building was showing its
age and downtown LA wasn't quite the
corporate destination that it once was
the owners need to Define new tenants
and they tried to take advantage of the
Strategic potential
it's also located near the SBC
communication pockbell Central switching
station at 400 South Grand with his
towering now obsolete microwave antenna
long distance carrier MCI thus mounted
its own microwave station on the roof of
one Wilshire at the time one of the
tallest buildings with good sight lines
to downtown and in 1992 one Wilshire
underwent a major renovation to
facilitate its new role upgrading its
power and cooling infrastructure
La is a city of infrastructure and flows
they turned a river into a bleak
concrete Channel highways laced through
and Define life here these constructions
don't make for pretty places at the same
time La is the place of glitzy images
presentations and Stage sets these two
worlds the infrastructure and the
spectacular display are usually kept
separate here but in some ways they come
together curiously at one Wilshire
movies stream to you through this
building but the building itself is
nothing much to look at
this is the nature of sites of logistics
places like Amazon distribution centers
are covering an increasingly large
footprint on the Earth but they're not
really spaces for people through the
spaces for the flow of things and
information out of sight and out of mind
despite their crucial importance in our
lives at Large
whereas there was a time when layers
upon layers of paperwork was processed
by layers upon layers of humans inside
of office spaces and that paperwork what
it generates is data right by the turn
of the 21st century it did get replaced
we continued to use the office tower for
what it is uh just that the constituent
processing that data uh is not human
this time one will show represents a
challenge for architecture in one sense
it's the future of digital
infrastructure yet it's almost a
completely generic office building the
building itself and its kind of outward
design almost doesn't seem to matter
it's more about what the building can do
during the 1800s railroads were cut
through our cities during the 1950s
highways were the new urgent physical
connections that needed to be cut right
through our cities today it's places
like one Wilshire it's not a building
for people but it's a building for
cables and the fact that it doesn't look
like much means I can hide and play in
sight
I can't believe how much I love this
little razor which was made in Henson
shavings Aerospace machine shop in
Canada Sings incredible it's made by
craftspeople in a family-run business
that makes parts for the ISS Mars Rover
and other satellites they've taken that
expertise and aimed it at crafting the
perfect razor through their research
they found that the way that the razor
blade is supported is crucial to the
smoothness of its operation the flexible
blade if it's left too exposed can
result in chatter causing Nicks cuts and
irritation
so hens and machines are razors out of
aluminum with Incredible tight
tolerances befitting their Aerospace
Heritage this allows them to expose the
minimum amount of actual blade just 27
microns the blade ends up being
supported along its length eliminating
chatter and eliminating the problems
that plague most razors as soon as you
touch it it feels like something that
could have been an integral part of the
space station or something it also has
clever engineering features like the
channels that help easily remove hair
and cream you can also use normal razor
blades that cost just 5 cents that are
recyclable making the razor a great
investment in high quality Earth
friendly personal item that makes you
feel like an astronaut every time that
you shave so use the link below pick out
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