Architects Referenced Old Style for New Look

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Designing buildings that fit with their surroundings and conserve an area’s historical significance are more than just concepts to Bill Roschen and his wife, Christi Van Cleve.


Their architectural firm, Roschen Van Cleve Architects, is bringing new life to old Hollywood, while building structures that mesh well within the burgeoning urban community.


For the fa & #231;ade and signage of the block-long Sunset & Vine retail/residential project, the pair chose to incorporate the historic Streamline Moderne ABC-TV building front giving residents on the second-floor recreation courtyard a view of Hollywood, using the historic walls as a framework.


Completed last year, the mixed-use project created 300 apartment units, plus a swimming pool and more than 110,000 square feet of retail stores that include Borders and Bed Bath & Beyond. Roschen and Van Cleve also decided to integrate the signage into the architecture to tie it all together.


For Roschen, Hollywood is a place that brings people together, whether it’s two strangers admiring the same person’s star on the sidewalk or gazing at a 1920s-era building that has been faithfully restored.


“It’s a little bit unique, the way we approach architecture,” Roschen said. “It’s done through community involvement. It’s given us great insight and shaped the way we do our practice and our projects.”


Roschen and Van Cleve completed the historic restoration of the KMPC building on the Tribune Co./KTLA studio lot on Sunset Boulevard. There they uncovered Gene Autry’s old office. It became the first historic restoration of a studio in California to receive tax credits.


They also converted the 1928 Art Deco Yucca Vine Tower into classrooms for the American Musical & Dramatic Academy and are restoring the Mediterranean-style Hillview Apartments on Hollywood Boulevard that were built in 1917 to give actors a place to live close to the studios.


“It’s great to have people like them to rely on, people who believe in the community,” said Leron Gubler, chief executive of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “The fact that they understand that Hollywood isn’t a suburban community but that it needs to be designed in context with historic buildings is invaluable.”


A Philadelphia native, Roschen studied architectural engineering at Penn State before earning a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Arizona State University in 1976. He later went to work for Charles Kober Associates, a large Los Angeles architectural firm.


He met Van Cleve on a lunchtime paddleboat ride for office staff in nearby MacArthur Park. Van Cleve, who moved with her family to Los Angeles from her native Ohio when she was 9, had just started as an intern at the firm after receiving her B.A. in design from UCLA.


After additional schooling on the East Coast (Van Cleve at Harvard, Roschen at Columbia), the two married in 1986. They founded their firm a year later.


Van Cleve said the combination of art and math, in addition to the opportunity to “engage the world,” is what drew them both to architecture. The firm moved to the ground floor of the Taft Building at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in 1990, in order to become more active in the just-starting Hollywood revitalization movement.


Next, Roschen and Van Cleve will be working on a project above the MTA Metro station at Hollywood and Vine that includes 150 condominiums, 360 market-rate and affordable apartments, a 300-room hotel and 60,000 square-feet of retail space.

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