Westin Bonaventure Hotel

The Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites is a 367-foot (112 m), 35-story hotel in Los Angeles, California, constructed between 1974 and 1976. Designed by architect John C. Portman, Jr., it is the largest hotel in the city. The top floor has a revolving restaurant and bar. It was originally owned by investors that included a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi Corporation and John Portman & Associates. The building is managed by Interstate Hotels & Resorts (IHR), and is valued at US$200 million.

Postmodern design

The hotel and its architect John Portman have been the subject of documentaries and academic analysis.

In his book Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (1989), Edward Soja describes the hotel as

a concentrated representation of the restructured spatiality of the late capitalist city: fragmented and fragmenting, homogeneous and homogenizing, divertingly packaged yet curiously incomprehensible, seemingly open in presenting itself to view but constantly pressing to enclose, to compartmentalize, to circumscribe, to incarcerate. Everything imaginable appears to be available in this micro-urb but real places are difficult to find, its spaces confuse an effective cognitive mapping, its pastiche of superficial reflections bewilder co-ordination and encourage submission instead. Entry by land is forbidding to those who carelessly walk but entrance is nevertheless encouraged at many different levels. Once inside, however, it becomes daunting to get out again without bureaucratic assistance. In so many ways, its architecture recapitulates and reflects the sprawling manufactured spaces of Los Angeles.

Fredric Jameson discusses the hotel in his book Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.

Floors and elevators

Although the top floor is numbered "35", there are no floors numbered "7" or "13"; so technically this is only a 33-story building. The four elevator banks (each containing three cars for a total of 12) are named by colors and symbols: Red Circle (the only one that goes to "35"; the other three only go to "32"), Yellow Diamond, Green Square, and Blue Triangle.

Location filming

Several bronze plaques commemorate elevator scenes from three major films:

• In the Line of Fire, September 1993, "Green Square" elevator
• True Lies, September 1993, "Red Circle" and "Yellow Diamond" elevators
• Forget Paris, November 1994, "Yellow Diamond" elevator

It has been featured in other movies and television series over the years including: Interstellar, Strange Days, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (as part of the city of New Chicago), Blue Thunder, It's a Living, L.A. Law, Breathless, This Is Spinal Tap, Hit the Booty Do, Nick of Time, Midnight Madness, Showtime, Hard to Kill, The Lincoln Lawyer, Chuck, Moby Dick, The Fantastic Journey and was destroyed (via special effects) in Escape from LA and Epicenter. You can see it under construction in the 1975 film The Wilderness Family (released a year before the hotel opened).

In 2002, the hotel was the location for a Fear Factor stunt which involved crossing a bridge of plexiglass discs on cables suspended on the lobby's fifth floor. The television series It's a Living was set in a restaurant atop the Bonaventure. The hotel is also showcased in episodes of CSI and its exterior can be seen in Americathon, Mission: Impossible III, Almighty Thor, Hancock, and at the beginning of the Lionel Richie "Dancing on the Ceiling" music video. The building made appearances in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and the 2012 video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II(in the "Aftermath" multiplayer map).

See also

Other John Portman hotels:

• Renaissance Center, Detroit, Michigan
• Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel and the Peachtree Center, Atlanta, Georgia
• Hyatt Regency San Francisco, San Francisco, California
• Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Atlanta, Georgia
• New York Marriott Marquis, New York City, New York

References

Further reading

• Cameron, Robert (1990). Above Los Angeles. San Francisco: Cameron & Company. ISBN 0-918684-48-X. 
• Webb, Michael (2000). Architecture + Design LA,. Berkeley: The Understanding Business Press. p. 8. ISBN 0-9641863-6-5. 
• Jameson, Frederic (1991). Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-0929-7. 
• Joseph-Lester, Jaspar (2009). Revisiting the Bonaventure Hotel. London: Copy Press. ISBN 0-9553792-2-9. 

External links

• The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, Los Angeles