There's a reason that this building is easily spotted by its street-facing 100 sign has found its way into seemingly every car commercial. Simply put, it looks like the clean, cool future we've been promised in movies, from its mechanical, glass and aluminum shell to its concrete courtyard, inset with horizontal neon bars. The façade along Main Street features an innovative double skin of glass behind perforated aluminum panels. The panels open and close mechanically timed with the movement of the sun and weather conditions, providing surface variety on the façade, shielding the interior from the sun, and giving office workers changing views to the outside. On exceptionally windy days, the perforated panels actually hum. The building's south façade is entirely surfaced with photovoltaic cells, mounted with a new system designed by Morphosis, its project collaborators and a team of special consultants. The cells, which extend from the fourth to the thirteenth floors, generate approximately 5% of the building's energy while shielding the façade from direct sunlight during peak summer hours. This and other energy savings features have led to an energy Silver Rating.Integrated into the outdoor lobby, is the four story light installation by artist Keith Sonnier, titled Motordom. Shifting patterns of red and blue light, generated in neon and argon tubes, develop in horizontal bands all around the lobby. The colored light not only plays within the outdoor lobby, filling and animating the space, but also washes through the glass curtain walls into the first four levels of the building interior. Motordom is the largest public art installation in Los Angeles.
http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist07/aboutus/building/ 100 S Main St. Los Angeles, CA