BAR Center at the Beach

Amid the dive bars, fast-food joints, and tattoo stands populating a funky stretch of the famed Venice boardwalk stands a luminescent jewel: BAR Center at the Beach, a community facility that’s part of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Its bright-white, three-dimensional facade, the work of Belzberg Architects, is aglow day and night like a sculptural installation amid towering palm trees backdropped by the Pacific Ocean.

Its dimensional aspect comes from Arktura’s aluminum panels, powder-coated white. Panels are treated with anti-graffiti coating; should vandalism occur, panels can be removed and replaced. Utilizing four software programs to devise the pattern, the six panel types are, again, triangular in form and mounted on a hexagonal base. They join a glass curtain wall patterned via a sandwiched laminate. Combined, the elements form an abstracted Star of David in varying scales, as does the glazing pattern.