My neighborhood on Design Sponge! That building houses Gjelina — a new restaurant that follows the annoying trend of thinking it is so cool it doesn’t need to put up a sign.

oh, i love that building! i took the same photos last time i walked by. i think that is a restaurant if i’m not misstaken, or it could be a design firm.

i’m originally from new orleans, where hanging gardens off balconies are quite popular through the French Quarter. as for Gjelina, pretentious yes, but the staff was quite nice to our group, the food is good & the interior is interesting.

I thought you might get a kick out of these 2 photos I snapped while in Osaka, Japan a couple of months ago.

I’m not sure what this building houses, but it was so refreshing seeing all these plants sprouting out of a building.

The Japanese are great with incorporating gardens into their buildings. Have you seen pictures of Namba Parks? Incredible!

http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/2584/dsc00244gf3.jpg

http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/9043/dsc00245lf9.jpg

You should give a look at this site. It present a french architet that creates the famous vertical gardens.

http://www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com/

i lived there breifly and one thing i loved about LA was their mix of architecure and landscaping of the native plants & trees.

Whether you think the lack of signage is annoying or not – the food is incredible, if you’re still in the area. I highly recommend the butterscotch p0t-du-creme. Just thinking about it makes me want to go back there.

I lived right behind this place for several years. It used to be a 50-60s furniture store and the upper portion was an apartment. The super-cool thing about this building is (was? – might not be there anymore) when you open the garage doors there’s an open courtyard. There were a bunch of furniture builders living there for a while. It looks like the really fixed the place up. It like the looks of it!