Westin Bonaventure Hotel

Westin Bonaventure Hotel
Location	404 South Figueroa Street Los Angeles, California
Hotel chain	Westin Hotels
Coordinates	34.052778°N 118.255833°W / 34.052778; -118.255833
Opening date	1976
Architect	John C. Portman, Jr.
Management	Starwood Hotels & Resorts
Owner	Interstate Hotels & Resorts
Rooms	1,354
Suites	135
Restaurants	Bona Vista Lounge Hotel Food Court Restaurants L.A. Prime Lakeview Bistro Lobby Court Coffee Bar
Floors	35
Total height	112 m (367 ft)
Website	www.westin.com/bonaventure
References:

The Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites is a 112 m (367 ft), 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.

Post Modern design

The hotel and its architects have been the subject of several documentaries. In his book Postmodern Geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory (1989), Edward W. 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" (p. 243-44).

Location filming

It has been featured in many movies and television series over the years including: Strange Days, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Blue Thunder, Breathless, This is Spinal Tap, Hit the Booty Do, In the Line of Fire, Nick of Time, True Lies, 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. The television series It's a Living was set in a restaurant atop the Bonaventure. The Westin Bonaventure 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.

See also

Other John Portman hotels:

• Renaissance Center, Detroit, Michigan
• Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel and the Peachtree Center, Atlanta, Georgia
• Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, California

Further reading

• Cameron, Robert (1990). Above Los Angeles. San Francisco: Cameron & Company. ISBN 091868448X. 
• Webb, Michael (2000). Architecture + Design LA,. Berkeley: The Understanding Business Press. p. 8. ISBN 0964186365. 
• Jameson, Frederic (1991). Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 0822309297. 

External links

• The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, Los Angeles