Architectural Hardscape

A bridge over a freeway.

Architecture never exists in a vacuum. Any work of architecture never truly looks great unless the interior design looks great, the landscape architecture is complementary, and the hardscape (developer speak for all hard surfaces: roads, parking lot, lighting, sidewalks) is well designed.
Above is a picture of hardscape in my neighborhood, a bridge over a freeway. This was designed and built as  a unified structure.  It is part of a big freeway expansion project and is repeated many times over the same freeway.  Presumably some time and effort went into the design of these bridges. Yet, it is not a coherent design. 

Q. What is wrong with is picture? 

A. Nothing goes together. 

Contemporary sidewalk lights. More decorative than functional.

The decorative sidewalk lights are designed to shine upward and reflect light off the curved hood down to the sidewalk. Not a bad contemporary design but the light they provide disappears in the surrounding street lights and freeway glare. These little lights provide precious little light. They should be called darks.  

Traditional street lights. 

Perhaps in recognition of the inefficacy of the pedestrian lights, slightly taller street lights are spaced regularly along the bridge. They provide adequate light for cars and pedestrians, but the traditional design of the taller lights has no relationship to the smaller contemporary lights. It is as if the two came from different centuries - the nineteenth and the twenty-first   No one bothered to coordinate the spacing of the tall lights to the smaller ones.  Sometimes they are close together, sometimes far apart. (Nice team effort there.) Furthermore, neither the tall lights nor the short lights have any design relationship to the street lighting in the neighborhoods on either side of the bridge or the more functional freeway lighting elsewhere. Any contextual reference is nonexistent. Doesn't anyone bother to consider these things?
  
What's wrong with this picture?  

A melange of hardscape design features. 

Photos: MJK

Architecture in Downtown LA - Part III

You Can't Fight City Hall

The most prominent building in downtown Los Angeles used to be the city hall. Gleaming white against the sky (at 454 feet), it has stood as a powerful symbol of the city since 1928. The structure has appeared innumerable times in movies and TV.  It has been destroyed in several disaster movies and was a stand-in for The Daily Planet in the 1950s television series The Adventures of Superman.

Los Angeles city hall.

Prior to 1964, concerns about seismic design made it impossible for any building in Los Angles to exceed the height of city hall. With changes in engineering technology and public policy, it is dwarfed today by the U.S. Bank Tower (73 stories), Aon Center (64 floors) and many other banal office blocks. (At present, there are 509 high-rises in the city of Los Angeles.)

One might think that the city hall would be a weak relic amidst powerful downtown towers twice its height. The surprising thing is that it still dominates the part of downtown in which it stands. Set back in a landscaped buffer from the streets that surround it, starkly white against the sky, and rigidly art deco in profile: this building makes a big impression. The city hall is distanced a few blocks from the massive towers of "new downtown." It is not buried in Manhattanesque redevelopment and, for this reason, stands as proudly as it must have in 1928. For architecture buffs it is a worthy historic site.

Travel by Train

In fact, there are several survivors of old Los Angles that still grace the downtown district. A previous blog entry mentioned the well-preserved Bradley Building. There is also the original and venerable Catholic church, La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora Reina de los Angeles, founded in 1814 and rebuilt in 1861. (Not to be confused with the architectural massif of Our Lady of the Angels.)  However, the crown of old buildings in downtown Los Angeles must rest on Union Station. Opened in May 1939, it is small compared to central stations in other major cities. It is, nevertheless, a grand example of transportation architecture. Today it is a hub for long-distance trains and for the city's commuter rail system.

Union Station.

The Future of Downtown LA

Well-preserved and still employed in its original purpose, Union Station is a fitting emblem for Los Angeles. Its Spanish-revival architecture recalls local history. The crowds in its great hall indicate a re-energized central city. This building is a perfect place to conclude our series on downtown Los Angeles. There could be plenty more to examine: Disney concert hall by Frank Gehry, the towers of new downtown, various condo restorations on Spring Street. However, Union Station is a positive note on which to close. It symbolizes the old and new coming together. It offers hope that no longer is Los Angeles "72 suburbs in search of a city," as Dorothy Parker famously quipped. It is, instead, a city striving to create a center for its far-flung suburbs. At first, in my little investigation of downtown LA, I ambled down Broadway and thought nothing has changed after decades of decrepitude. But one need only walk a little longer and a little further to discover that the core is still alive and there is hope for a fully viable center for the sprawl that is Los Angeles.

Union Station central waiting room.

Photos:
All by MJK.

Architecture in Downtown LA - Part II

1. Figueroa Hotel.

My explorations of downtown Los Angeles took me past the Figueroa Hotel, 939 Figueroa Street. Surrounded by parking lots, it is a lonely survivor from old Los Angeles. Built in 1925, it is lavishly Moorish in a movie-set sort of way. It looks like a place that would be fun to stay in, however, on-line reviews on various travel sites are tepid at best. Do your own research if the place looks tempting.

2. Lobby, Figueroa Hotel.

If you are looking for more serious historic architecture downtown, the Bradbury building is the place to check out. It is impeccably maintained and fully occupied, a rarity on Broadway. I made a pilgrimage to this site when I was in architecture school. It is admired by architecture buffs for its light-flooded atrium, fine iron work, and forward-thinking interiors. This is advanced architecture for the year it was built, 1893. In the meantime, film buffs became aware of the building through its frequent use in movies and TV. Most memorably, the building is the setting for several scenes in the dystopian cult classic Blade Runner with Harrison Ford.

3. Bradbury building at 304 Broadway.

Local architect Sumner Hunt was first hired to design the building. He was unable to fulfil the lofty aspirations of the developer, Lewis L. Bradbury. The commission then fell to Hunt's draftsman, George Wyman who is credited as author of the building.

4. Bradbury building entrance.

5. Bradbury building atrium.

6. Historic American Buildings photograph.

The main floor of the Bradbury building is open to the public without charge.

Photo credits:
1. MJK
2. MJK
3. MJK
4. MJK
5. MJK
 6. Historic American Buildings Survey

Architecture in Downtown LA - Part I

One can visit Los Angeles and never go downtown. Other attractions beckon louder. The beaches, Rodeo Drive, Hollywood, the Sunset strip. Looking for architecture, you're more likely to ferret-out Gehry in Venice, Wright in the hills, and the Greene brothers in Pasadena. What reasons are there to go downtown? Well, I attended a conference sponsored by Dwell magazine at the downtown Marriott and was forced to go downtown for the first time in decades. I carved out some free time to revisit old sites and see what was new and what, if anything, had changed. The self-guided walking tour was full of discoveries.

1. One of many forlorn theaters.

My first impression was that nothing has changed. That was because I walked down Broadway and found the same derelict theaters, discount stores, and joyerias ("se venda oro!") that have dominated the street as long as anyone can remember. It was unchanged and uninviting. Sure, there were obvious attempts to revitalize downtown with new anchors at its extremities.  There are the cultural icons of the Chandler Pavilion and Disney Concert Hall on the north. On the south side of downtown are Staples Center, the convention hall, and L.A. Live. This includes the Ritz Carlton and Marriott hotels. Like plates on a dumbbell, these are weighty ends to downtown, but the stuff in between is light in juxtaposition to these renewal efforts. However -- and this is a strong however -- there are signs of new life. Go a block off  Broadway to Spring Street and find many old financial buildings reborn as lofts. Sprinkled on the edges of the district are new contemporary loft-style buildings as well. Downtown L.A. is tentatively participating in the urban renaissance that has swept many inner cities. Trendy shops and restaurants have not have followed, yet. But that may happen with a little more time. It is still a dicey proposition. Between the lofts are handsome, but abandoned, buildings that teeter between life and death. Some sport marquees that plead for a cameo in a movie, re-mindful of the would-be starlets that parade their assets on Sunset Boulevard a few miles up town.

2. On Broadway.

3. Derelict deco.

A big-time contribution to the possible salvation of downtown Los Angeles cannot be ignored: the new metro system. Actually, it is not all that new. Comprising five lines and 79 miles of track, the bulk of the system debuted in the 1990s. Today Metro Rail carries a ridership of 350,000 daily weekday boardings. To my mind, this is what makes downtown L.A. ultimately viable. I have visited the city many times since the rails were inaugurated, but had no idea how extensive it is. From downtown you can easily get to Hollywood, Long Beach, Pasadena, and elsewhere. It would even be possible to make a viable tourist trip to L.A. without ever renting a car (surprise!) and it is possible to live downtown without feeling isolated. In my explorations I used the downtown subway lines several times. It was cheap and clean.

4. The five lines of Metro Rail.

As it turns out, my first impression of today's downtown was wrong. Broadway may be it shabby, but there are signs of renewal and hope pressing in. My previous blog entry explored one new work of architecture in downtown L.A.: the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The next few entries will explore more architecture in downtown Los Angeles. In sum, they make downtown a not-so-bad place to visit and a possible place to actually live. Stay tuned.

5. Auditioning for a role.

Photo credits:

<sup>1. MJK
2. MJK
3. MJK
4. RickyCourtney
5. MJK</sup>

Architecture: The Best Phase

Architects usually describe their work process in phases: schematic design phase, design development phase, construction documents phase, etc. Another phase - the best one, in my opinion - is hardly talked about. My favorite phase is when construction has started and the rough framing is in progress. Residential architecture in the United States is still built mostly with lumber, not cold steel or lumpy concrete. We use real wood, from trees.

I love walking a job site and smelling the sap from fresh sawn wood. Southern pine. Douglas fir. Hem-fir. All woods have a sweet smell that is released by hammer and saw. I love the sound of the rotary blade doing its work. Of nails being driven into the grain. Joists and studs and blocking finding their proper places and roof beams lifted against the sky. All of this is a three-dimensional efflorescence of what previously existed only on paper or on a computer monitor. The idea is taking shape. Nothing mars it at this phase. No wrong colors, no decorating mistakes. Just pure form materializing.

Framing is the best phase of architecture.

All photos: MJK