Random Thoughts on Urban Clutter

In keeping with a Chinese New Year tradition of cleaning off the tops of desks, this week’s column consists of select items that have been floating around my computer’s memory.

Heading the list is the fate of the ill-considered proposal to have pedways clutter up the ambitious $1-billion Library Square project, in particular the monumental stairway connecting the Central Library to California Plaza.

The proposal was put forward by city Planning Director Calvin Hamilton and supported by Donald Howery, general manger of the city’s Department of Transportation--who, because of their advocacy of obtuse planning theories, have become known as the Heckle and Jeckle of city government.

Despite their lobbying, the pedway proposal died, thanks to the City Council and Mayor Tom Bradley. The mayor also called in Hamilton and Howery to make sure they understood that he wanted them to stop carping, and to start working with other agencies to expedite the Library Square proposal--without the pedways.

There are still a number of issues to be resolved that could affect the plan, including various knee-jerk street widenings proposed by Howery to accommodate his antiquated traffic theories.

To move traffic downtown one wonders when the city will just simply do some fine tuning, such as more one-way streets, no left-hand turns, strict parking enforcement and traffic managers at corners prone to grid lock--instead of proposing costly construction projects. Another modest move also would be to stop providing free or subsidized parking to city workers, at least those who are supposed to be coming up with solutions to the traffic problem, and make them car- or van-pool or take public transportation. Perhaps if Hamilton and Howery set an example. . . .

And whatever happened to . . . those tacky signs being proposed for the tops of various corporate edifices rising downtown?

They got worse.

Just as we feared, following the questionable decision of the city redevelopment agency’s board of commissioners allowing a COAST SAVINGS sign to be erected on the top of a building being packaged by the Reliance Development Group of New York, in marched Citicorp with a proposed CITICORP sign for its new building. It too was approved. Together the signs spell TACKY.

If the agency doesn’t put its foot down soon, the fledgling downtown skyline could turn into a smear of signs, with each one trying to out-do the last in size and glitz. That is what happens when they are not controlled.

Signs are more than a problem downtown. More and more seem to be intruding on streets, boulevards and freeways to create what could be called visual pollution. Though not as deadly as air pollution, it does offend the senses. Is there no escape from advertisers?

The latest assault is on the Hollywood Freeway. Just west of the Vermont Avenue turnoff, there is a stretch of land dividing the north and southbound lanes. (The land was to be used as an interchange with another freeway which was never built.) Through the years, Caltrans has used the area as a parking lot and equipment yard, until about half a year ago when it apparently was leased for a self-storage yard.

“This is made quite clear by signs now mounted on walls of the building, no more than 25 or 30 feet away from traffic lanes,” notes a reader. “The signs are as prime a location as you can find to intrude advertising before the eyes of thousands of daily commuters.

“Perhaps that is its highest and best use,” he adds. “Certainly, someone in a state office somewhere was doing what he or she thought best. . . . The sadness is that at some level an opinion could not have been held that this land would have been a reasonable area to landscape, to offer something soothing for a commuter to enjoy, to break the dreary procession of more freeway.”

More Awards ... for the Galaxy Theater in San Francisco designed by Kaplan/McLaughlin/Diaz Architects. The latest for the playful, glass structure came from the National Assn. of Home Builders. The theater also has been honored by the California Council of the AIA and the Pacific Coast Builders Conference.

In an awards program that the city of Los Angeles could benefit from by emulating, the Claremont Architectural Commission honored a variety of design efforts in the San Gabriel Valley.

Awards went to Pomona College for a new library, designed by Howard H. Morgridge & Associates of Tustin, and for the design by Nakano--Rosenfeld Associates and subsequent maintenance of some select landscaping. I was particularly impressed that the importance of maintenance was recognized.

There also were awards for the preservation of a historic home, a remodeling project, an addition, attractive signage and house painting, as well as for new construction. The diverse awards categories seems refreshingly appropriate to the diverse impact of design on a community.

Receiving three awards for excellence from the San Fernando Valley chapter of the AIA was the firm of Leidenfrost/ Horowitz & Associates for a sleek commissary in El Segundo, a security-conscious medical building in Los Angeles and the interior of a UCLA residence hall dining room.

Awards also went to Bouje Bernkopf for a singular, assertive design for the Groch residence in Encino, Gary Larson for a subdued office building in Arcadia, and to the Lane Architectural Group for the interior of a computer disk manufacturer in Chatsworth and for a proposed Defense Department facility in San Diego.

There were no awards for the conversion by Craig R. Townsend of a drugstore and beauty salon in the Silver Lake area into a savings and loan, but the design deserves mention, for it is a welcome exception to just the type of remodeling that is so often overwrought. The style is functional and attractive.

Worthy of mention also are three residences on the 400 block of 6th Street in Manhattan Beach, designed without fanfare over a number of years by John Blanton. The diverse, well-detailed designs also are without the high-tech cliches and “statements” that burden so many beach homes these days.

“I tend to stay away from forms that are highly symbolic laden,” declared Blanton. “I don’t do bay windows and I don’t do pipe railings. Anyway, they rust when exposed to sea air.” It is nice to meet an architect who worries about the houses he designs after the photographs are taken for submission for awards or to magazines.

Footnote . . . The first Presidential Awards for Design Excellence, which I praised a few weeks ago. Though I was impressed by the process and noted that it was nice to find a jury that was diverse in perspective and politics, I must add that the level of submission was disappointing.

Maria Giesey, a Los Angeles designer who served on the jury, noted that part of the reason for the dearth of quality submissions was that “many agency heads just did not seem to be aware of the impact of good design.”

Giesey added in a burst of candor that the selection process in which she participated indicated that “unfortunately, public design at present is not at a level of which we can be proud. The winners were exceptions.”