Johnson Fain

Residential tower rises with collaboration and communication

By Brian Libby

Exterior of Figueroa Eight in L.A.
Ground level entrance, Figueroa Eight, Los Angeles, Johnson Fain. Photo by Benny Chan.

The Los Angeles skyline’s sophisticated, sustainable new landmark

Johnson Fain relied on Autodesk Revit to help its multinational-developer client negotiate regulatory hurdles as well as design guidelines and cost constraints to bring much-needed housing and density to downtown L.A. with the new Figueroa Eight.

Problem-solving and improv

Interior with white reception desk, wood panel celing, sitting area with couch and two orange chairs, and spiral staircase
Ground level lobby, Figueroa Eight, Los Angeles, Johnson Fain. Photo by Benny Chan.

Architect James “JED” Donaldson, a partner at Los Angeles firm Johnson Fain, has spent over 20 years leading design teams and guiding the firm’s ongoing embrace of technological tools at every stage.

“I’ve always been interested in how technology and software can empower us, from concept through construction,” he says. “I’ve often been the one at the firm saying, ‘Here's a new tool Autodesk came out with. Let's look at it.’ I’m curious and enjoy putting in the time to show the studio how we can use it to solve a particular design problem and explain our thinking to owners, contractors, and the city.”

Donaldson not only keeps busy with architecture and professional involvement — speaking at design conferences worldwide while holding leadership roles with AIA Los Angeles and Passive House California — but he is also a Renaissance man. A longtime visual artist and writer, he also participates in improv comedy productions. “It helps keep your thought processes lively, and able to just be in the moment,” he explains.

Tower of opportunity

Tower in downtown Los Angeles
Aerial view of tower and pool, Figueroa Eight, Los Angeles, Johnson Fain. Photo by Benny Chan.

Donaldson's work with Johnson Fain has ranged from museums to cathedrals, yet mixed-use projects have long been a particular focus. The downtown Los Angeles residential high-rise known as Figueroa Eight, completed in March 2024, represents a high point in Donaldson’s career, figuratively and literally. “It was a unique opportunity to be part of the Los Angeles skyline,” he says.

Designed for developer Mitsui Fudosan America (MFA), the 41-story tower was built on the site of a longtime surface parking lot. Johnson Fain helped the client explore a range of options (hotel, office, retail) and maximize height through transfers of floor area ratio allowed by the City of Los Angeles.

“We used Revit and its conceptual design and massing tools to communicate to the client what was possible,” Donaldson recalls. “We made diagrams early on using Revit to show views out from the tower and the context of the other towers.”

Autodesk Revit also helped Johnson Fain translate reams of data into key findings that could inform their presentation to MFA, “which the developer could use to put in their pro forma and evaluate what works,” he adds. “They didn’t want to overextend on bringing too many units to the market or fall short and not bring enough. We needed to help them find the right balance.”

Overcoming constraints collaboratively

Rooftop pool with buildings surrounding it
Rooftop pool, Figueroa Eight, Los Angeles, Johnson Fain. Photo by Benny Chan.

A residential tower and podium with 438 units as well as 7,500 square feet of ground-level retail and parking for more than 500 vehicles, Figueroa Eight’s design had to comply with a myriad of constraints. There were building code requirements, neighborhood My Figueroa streetscape standards, and City of Los Angeles urban design guidelines for façade materials and massing. Because the building faces streets and public walkways on all four sides, each facade was important and had to be treated as a primary façade. “The City of Los Angeles wanted transparency and porosity so that as you're walking down the sidewalk, you are engaged with the building,” Donaldson explains.

Donaldson remembers his Johnson Fain team gathered in a conference room, “hand-drawing over AutoCAD backgrounds with trace paper, pinning everything up on the wall, and talking about it. Then we’d take the drawings back to the desk to update it in the Revit model, to create a rendering that communicates the design intent to the design commission and the City.” Figueroa Eight’s digital model also became for Johnson Fain, builder Lend Lease, and key subcontractors “a centralized place where we resolved everything. What's great about Revit for us is that we can capture it all in one place by linking everybody else's information.”

Fine-tuning the curtain wall

Rooftop deck with barbecue grills and tables and chairs
Rooftop deck, Figueroa Eight, Los Angeles, Johnson Fain. Photo by Benny Chan.

Seeking LEED Silver certification and conforming to the California Energy Code (Title 24), the architects and contractor lowered Figueroa Eight’s carbon footprint by reducing the amount of aluminum used in the façade. This was an iterative process of reducing window-mullion depths so the unitized curtain wall assembly could be shipped in a finished piece rather than being fabricated onsite.

“We made detailed drawings in Revit that superimposed the ratio limitations of the dye for aluminum extrusion, which we were able to revise three-dimensionally and generate new renderings very quickly,” Donaldson explains. “The contractor would calculate the reduction of mullion cap extrusions in linear feet, which in turn reduced the cost and increased sustainability.”

Autodesk tools also helped the team evaluate different glass-façade choices on the project’s energy efficiency, including clear vision-glass and opaque spandrel glass panels with and without frit-dot patterning. “We made a curtain-wall analysis tool to iterate through different typologies that we then could quantify quickly,” Donaldson says.

A few days later, in a conference room, they’d show the client glass samples corresponding with a Revit-based, color-coded diagram onscreen. “We’d say, ‘Everywhere, that's white, that’s vision-glass you can see through. Everywhere that's red, you can't see through that spandrel panel.’ We’d point to the table and say, ‘Here's this one,’ and hold up the sample,” Donaldson remembers. “The client would say, ‘That looks like a lot of red—a lot of opaque. I want more vision [glass].’ We’d say, ‘Yes, we can do that.’ You have to speak in a language that everybody can understand and relate to so they can make sophisticated decisions.”

Making the complex clear

Rather than a digital twin to simulate Figueroa Eight, Johnson Fain used Revit in tandem with the Enscape real-time rendering and virtual-reality plugin to create an experiential virtual journey through spaces, allowing the client to review and understand design choices.

“We put the client in the goggles to look at details like soffit designs and shapes of columns,” Donaldson says. “And despite having seen all these renderings and Revit 3D, once you put them in the virtual environment, they had a totally different feel for the project.”

This integrated design and visualization workflow even helped Johnson Fain’s own staff better understand what they were designing, drawing from material and asset libraries to provide synchronized views of the project as it took shape. “Young architects here at the studio would sometimes say, ‘I don't know quite how this is coming together,’ so I’d say, ‘Let's look at it in the virtual environment,’” he says. “I'd have the designer put the glasses on. They could hover around like a bee and look at a particular detail. They’d say, ‘Oh, I get it now.’”

Lessons for architects

Floor plan drawing of apartments
Floor plan for level 39, Figueroa Eight, Los Angeles, Johnson Fain.

Donaldson encourages his fellow architects to make these digital tools their own. “We actually might use a curtain wall tool to draw a railing because we can customize it much easier and quicker,” he says. “You can adapt Revit’s tools outside of the box of how the software wants you to use it, as long as you understand how to make it work for your deliverable. I think it's kind of common for architects to use these Revit tools differently than they were intended.”

With Revit and other Autodesk tools, today’s architects can simultaneously address many different steps in the design and construction process. The bottom line is that there isn’t just one way of utilizing the software to design a building.

“The way of designing today doesn't need to be linear, in the sense of, ‘I'm not going to worry about that until I get to the end,’” Donaldson says. “The power of Revit and properly drawing in Revit is that you can set up a methodology in the beginning that can scale up in complexity and grow over time so that you get further than you would have otherwise, from concept all the way to construction documents.”

“While designing Figueroa Eight, a tall building that has thousands and thousands of parts, we were able to explore creative ideas that were iterative,” he continues. “We made detailed drawings to give to the contractor and engineers, as well as renderings to share with the client and community. I think that's something this building demonstrates: that success from start to finish.”

Brian Libby

Brian Libby is a Portland, Oregon-based freelance architecture journalist and critic. He has written for The New York Times, Architectural Record, The Wall Street Journal, Architect, Dwell, The Architect's Newspaper and Metropolis, among many other publications, and has written numerous architectural monographs.

See more of Figueroa Eight

Exterior of Figueroa Eight

Exterior, Figueroa Eight, Los Angeles, Johnson Fain. Photo by Benny Chan.

Large sectional sofa with flat screen TV and open doors to pool

Entertainment space adjacent to pool, Figueroa Eight, Los Angeles, Johnson Fain. Photo courtesy of Benny Chan.

Fitness equipment

Fitness center, Figueroa Eight, Los Angeles, Johnson Fain. Photo courtesy of Benny Chan.