A Glimpse Into the Future From Art Center Students

For a glimpse of a better-designed, more stylish future, there is no place like the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Opening today at its main campus megastructure at 1700 Lida St. in the hills north of the Rose Bowl is an exhibit of current student work, featuring futuristic designs of, among other things, automobiles, work spaces and musical instruments.

The exhibit is free and, if anything like past exhibits at the school, should be fanciful and fun. It is not for puffery that the center has earned its reputation as one of the world’s leading professional schools of industrial and graphic design, illustration, advertising, photography, film and fine art.

Meanwhile, continuing at the college’s Downtown Gallery at 54 W. Colorado Blvd. through Jan. 9 is a modest exhibit of an immodest, noble proposal to reclaim a 175-acre wasteland in a strip of northern Pasadena where the Arroyo Seco Creek flows out of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Conceived by environmental artists Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison, the proposal, depicted in a collection of hand-colored photo collages and a 15-foot model, calls for replacing the present Devil’s Gate Dam and water shed with a more ecologically sensitive, sculpted landscape designed as a public promenade and park. Makes both aesthetic and design sense to me.

The so-called environment-as-art exhibit at the gallery is open today from 12:30 to 9 p.m., and the student exhibit at the megastructure from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Both are closed on Sundays. Because of the holidays, the days and hours of the exhibits will vary, and it is suggested that those interested in attending call (818) 584-5000 for the gallery schedules.

Of interest also is the downtown gallery and the building it is in. The gallery has been fashioned out of the well-detailed storefront of the former Crown City Glass Co. building, a two-story relic built in 1897 that lends a nice sense of scale and a touch of history to the present incipient historic district lining Colorado Boulevard.

In addition to the gallery, the building, as renovated by architect Peter de Bretteville--with an obvious respect for the structure and a tight budget--contains a variety of classrooms, artist studios and office space serving the school’s expanding fine arts program. The building in effect is a campus, spilling out onto a brick-encrusted rear alley, embracing its urban setting, and welcoming visitors.

Old, New Contrast

The “new” college facility carved out of a 90-year-old commercial structure is an interesting contrast with the college’s “old” facility, set in the rustic hills on the western edge of suburban Pasadena.

Designed by architect Craig Ellwood and built in 1976, the old facility is a landmark of Modernist architecture, functional and bold. A two-story glass-and-steel rectangular structure stretching 627 feet, the composition is in the form of two boxes resting on opposite sides of a canyon and connected by an enclosed, trussed bridge. The access road to the megastructure runs beneath the bridge, which incidentally contains the student exhibit area.

The sleek, restrained design was described by Ellwood in an interview Wednesday as “a hill-town solution” that minimized the need for grading and left the landscape in a natural state.

“I also liked the contrast between the honest, simple expression of the raw structure” and the sylvan setting, added Ellwood, who recently returned to Los Angeles to resume his career as an architect after painting and sculpting in Italy the last 10 years.

Bridge Worked Best

“Three different designs were explored, with the bridge being the most dramatic, most feasible, and most economic,” Ellwood said. He noted that the construction cost of the school was $16.32 a square foot, substantially less than the quoted $74 a square foot it was then costing to build comparable facilities for the state university system.

That the design by Ellwood should also be quite striking, indeed futuristic and controversial, no doubt pleased the college. Then, as now, the Art Center seems to like to balance itself on the cutting edge of design.