Mini-Markets: Design for Future Schlock?

When we build, let us think that we build forever. --John Ruskin, 1849.

There was the faint hope that in time the black- and white-striped mini-mall at the southwest corner of La Cienega Boulevard and Melrose Avenue just might disappear, like a bad mirage, or that it might be softened by sensitive landscaping or in a heavy rain, its colors would run into a silky gray.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t. The mall, designed by the firm of A. C. Martin for the Olympic-Barrington partnership, exudes tackiness, a very clumsy attempt to make a trendy architectural statement.

There is nothing wrong with designing an architectural and commercial calling card, something distinctive that in an eclectic funky-punk context, such as Melrose Avenue, stands out and announces itself to all the world. Except that it better be good.

Instead of taking advantage of the prominent corner, the massing, styling and detailing of 8500 Melrose Ave. detracts from it. A notched second floor crushes a column below, pushing it into a planter full of angry firethorn bushes, making sitting on the ledge a masochistic act. Like the architecture, the landscaping is not very friendly.

The corner column also destroys what could have been one of the best exposures in the city for a display window. Not helping either are the badly scaled window mullions. And the effect of the second-floor windows, accented by the forced striping, is to press down on the ground floor and overwhelm the sidewalk and street.

As for the entry through a central court, it is overwhelmed by a spiral staircase, made all the more awkward by the pipe railing painted a sultry pink. The high-tech touch lends the building that little extra confusion of styles it certainly doesn’t need.

The black-and-white marble cladding, which works so well on the facade of the 14th-Century cathedral in the Piazza del Duomo in Siena designed by Giovanni Pisano, just doesn’t make it on Melrose Avenue. Somehow, as applied here, it looks very much like wallpaper. Cheap.

A. C. Martin appears to have a very bad case of facadism, and Melrose Avenue has another bomb of a building. Those responsible in the firm for design should do some serious reexamination of their own intellectual and aesthetic pretenses before foisting them on others. Unlike a newspaper column, architecture cannot be easily discarded.

A much more successful attempt at a mini-mall is the Boulevard, at 8611 Santa Monica Blvd. Designed in a modest high-tech style by the architectural firm of Herbert Nadel & Partners, the two-story structure, if anything, is too self-effacing.

The mall addresses the street with a well-scaled and massed uniform facade, reinforcing the sidewalk and encouraging pedestrian life. The facade is punctured by a broad stairway leading up under a glass atrium to second floor offices and an open rear parking lot. Though concealed from view from the street, the parking is quite convenient.

Unlike 8500 Melrose, each of the 11 street shops in the Boulevard has its own front door, creating a very neighborly feel to the sidewalk. Indeed, what makes this mini-mall so attractive is that it doesn’t appear like a mall at all, but a block of attractive shops.

The effect is urban, yet accessible, a rare and welcome combination.

Most developers of mini-malls want the stores set as far back from the street as possible, putting the parking adjacent to the sidewalk where those driving by can see it. The effect often is to destroy what little pedestrian life there was on the sidewalks and to weaken the street.

These are not developers who are building for the ages, as Ruskin had urged. And if an architect in their employ protests too much, one can be assured he or she will not be employed for very long, and that the developer will seek a more compliant associate.

If a developer insists on the parking in the front, the challenge then for architects who want to pay back their student loans, or simply pay their rent, is to somehow design the mall to at least be more attractive.

Whatever their situation, architect Don Barnay and landscaper Laura Saltzman have done an admirable job, lending some style and sensitivity to the Serrano Center on the north side of 6th Street between Serrano Avenue and Hobart Boulevard.

While under construction, the center looked as if it was going to be another mini-mall of the type that has been defacing the city- scape.

However, the recently completed one-story stretch of stores is modestly scaled and detailed in a clean, Art Deco style, replete with peach pastel awnings. Helping also are the struggling palms and the other frail plantings.

Though Ruskin, were he to pass through Los Angeles, no doubt would not write home about the Serrano Center, or the Boulevard, they appear as conscientious attempts at architecture within the constraints of reality. After all, most architecture of retail spaces is really the art of effect, and if the effect is good, then the architecture is good.

Some good, some fair and some bad, but all interesting are the works of a variety of architects gathered together under the banner of Thrive and being displayed at the Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood, through March 9. (Call 213/651-1510 for days and hours.)

Wallace Cunningham’s graceful design solutions display a rare sensitivity to site, while some of the sketches of others unfortunately look like they are straight out of the Saturday morning children’s television cartoon shows.

Best of all, there is the Schindler House itself, still a marvelous display of architecture as a social art. Ruskin would certainly have made note of it.