Redondo Landing

As the first deep water trading port serving the Los Angeles area, Redondo Beach has held a special place in the maritime history of southern California, having seen seven piers come and go since the first was built in 1889. With the City of Redondo Beach pursuing another renovation, RDR Properties, leaseholder of the 40,000-square foot Seaside Lagoon Building, sought to help kick off the process by recapturing those glory days at the close of the western frontier.Nest Architecture was faced with two major challenges in taking on this project – modernize the buildings and create more family-friendly public spaces to better accommodate the tourist traffic the city hoped to generate, while at the same time referencing architecture from the pier’s heyday as a busy port.Since we weren’t rebuilding structures from the ground up, our first step was to capture the look of California’s seaports in the 19th-century, then figure out how we could use and alter existing structures to make that look a reality.The changes eliminated the aluminum, Polynesian-inspired design elements from the 1960s renovation and instead use natural materials and more cheerful colors to bring to mind buildings like the Looff Hippodrome, a carousel building that entertained pier visitors in the 1920s. Such changes allowed us to take a building that was once dank and uninspired and breathe into it new life.Now to be known as Redondo Landing, this project kicked off a multi-year, phased renewal program for the pier that will result in a complete renovation and rebranding of the entire waterfront.