United Oil Gasoline Station

Kanner Architect

CATEGORY
Gas Station

ARCHITECTS
Kanner Architects

MANUFACTURERS
Bendheim

AREA
630.8 m2

LOCATION
Los Angeles, United States

YEAR
2009

Text description provided by architect.

Situated at La Brea and Slauson avenues in Los Angeles’s Mid-City neighborhood, the United Oil Gas Station is a marriage of the city’s historic love affair with the automobile and today’s modern one-stop shopping spirit of immediate gratification and convenience.

The daring and active design seeks to resuscitate a streetscape through integration of a 12-pump gas station, mini-market and car wash. The resulting structure is an original machine of vehicular form and function.

Reminiscent of Southern California’s ubiquitous freeway interchanges, two planes soar from the ground. One, a concrete ramp, takes patrons up and over the rear of the mini-market and back down into a car wash.

The second, a sinuous and curvilinear metal structure, swoops down from the sky to serve as the roof of the mini-market. The form regains an upward momentum that carries it around the front of the market where it becomes a 30-foot canopy over the pumps.