The Chet Holifield Federal Building — universally known as the Ziggurat — is one of the stranger pieces of architecture in Southern California. The building is an inverted pyramid of fourteen stories, each floor wider than the one below, stepping out at a steep angle from a narrow base to a vast upper platform. It rises from the rolling hills of northern Laguna Niguel like something from a science fiction film about ancient civilisations.
The building houses federal government offices — no public tours — but it is visible from the 73 toll road and from Crown Valley Parkway, and it is worth slowing down to look. The combination of brutalist concrete engineering, inverted geometry, and Southern California suburban setting creates a visual non sequitur that's hard to ignore. Built in 1971 to designs by William Pereira, it has 1.1 million square feet of office space and remains one of the largest federal office buildings in the United States.