Chrome High-Rise Meets Rust

Warner Center’s slickest-looking new high-rise is about to meet Warner Center’s ricketiest-looking new high-rise.

The first is a $65-million, 12-story chrome and glass office building near the corner of Victory Boulevard and Canoga Avenue.

The second is a haphazard-looking 18-foot-tall metallic stack of rusty chairs, a desk, typewriter, telephone, table and filing cabinet that will decorate the new building’s cavernous main lobby.

A design for the welded sculpture was judged the winner Tuesday in a competition among UCLA graduate art students for $7,500 and the right to build the permanent lobby centerpiece for the new Warner Corporate Center.

The stack of furniture, titled “Office Party” by student artist Steve Hurd, beat models of five more conventional entries.

It was not a unanimous decision, though.

“It’s not what I would have picked to put in my business,” said judge Murray Fink, a KGIL radio talk-show host and former head of the San Fernando Valley Arts Council.

“I figured they should have something that was right for the Valley. The next time, they should go to Cal State Northridge for a competition like this.”

The high-rise’s developer and contest underwriter, Gene Rosenfeld, acknowledged it wasn’t what he would have picked to put in his business, either.

“It wasn’t my first choice,” said Rosenfeld, who was one of the judges. “But then we didn’t want a ‘Miami Vice’ thing, where everything looks the same.”

Other judges said the unusual office furniture sculpture will fit nicely in the Valley office setting, however.

“It was the most unique entry,” said De Wain Valentine, an internationally known sculptor who works in plastics and glass. “It looked the least like what we tend to think sculpture should look like.”

Said judge Suzanne Muchnic, an art writer for the Los Angeles Times: “My choice won. I felt it was strong conceptually and makes sense in an office complex. He’s using recognizable things and there’s a sense of humor there I think is appropriate.”

Hurd said he ignored abstract shapes favored by his competitors.

“People don’t have to know about art to understand this,” said Hurd, 31. “I’m not making this for a particular taste in art. This is going to be for people who work in the building.”

Still, Hurd said, “I didn’t think I’d win. And I’m not just being a good sport, either.”