Design Debate on the Sunset Strip

Though Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood is such a special street, I thought there might be some lessons to be learned from the urban design issues raised by a controversial project there.

The project is a combined office and residential complex at No. 8981. When, two years ago, I first glanced at its plans and renderings in an issue of Progressive Architecture magazine, they looked quite promising.

Designed by the Architectural Collective of Venice, Charles Lagreco, principal, the project had won a coveted citation from the magazine for its intention of providing a more intense use and edge to the famous Strip.

The project subsequently also won a citation from the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, with the jury stating, among other things, that it “comes to grips with complex constraints and mixed uses.”

However, as the 6-plus-story complex on the sloping site neared completion, I felt its promise had waned. Stating in a column last summer that while I liked the mixed-use nature of the project, thought the scale appropriate and didn’t mind the arbitrary coloring, its street-level facade was anti-pedestrian and disappointing. I labeled the building “a bully.”

Lagreco took exception to the description, contending in a letter that I had not taken into consideration the “restless crowds” generated by the neighboring nightclubs that each evening overwhelm the sidewalks.

“What the solution is trying to do is both clearly to define a positive relationship to the street and allow the building to survive in a sometimes hostile environment,” the architect explained.

“If Sunset Boulevard is to achieve a successful transition from its current dynamic, if deficient, condition to a more stable, balanced pattern of use while preserving what makes the Strip unique,” Lagreco concluded, “it needs carefully considered alternatives that are respectful of all users.”

It was a good point, but one I didn’t think the project demonstrated. In being possibly respectful of the project’s tenants who enter through the basement, the blank walls and yawning garage at the street level were quite disrespectful of pedestrians. I felt the project’s design reflected an anti-urban, bunker mentality.

What it seemed to me Lagreco had done was to follow a basic principle in the unprincipled world of advertising: That when you find out something wrong with your product, deny it. (A classic example of this was a lemonade concocted of chemicals, being promoted a few years ago with the slogan, “Tastes Like Real Lemonade.”) To me 8981 was a flawed concoction.

Wanting another perspective before I perhaps would write more on the subject, I sent a copy of the Lagreco’s letter to Mark Winogrond, the city’s chief planner. His subsequently reply to Lagreco, with a copy to me, was an urban-design primer.

Stating that the building “has little positive relationship to the street,” Winogrond observed that “it does nothing to draw the pedestrian into the project; it does nothing to invite the passenger driving by in an automobile. In fact, it presents barriers to the street.” He added:

“My strong belief is that the building’s primary design responsibility is contextual; in an already developed urban environment, it must succeed within and add to the established urban fabric and context,” which Winogrond said 8981 does not.

With this in mind, the planning official said under present laws in West Hollywood, the building would not be approved.

It was Winogrond’s contention that “such a lack of urban design perspective” the building displayed “is what has led communities and planners across the country to impose more restrictive, often more arbitrary regulations.

The architect and the architectural profession pay a price for such limited, project-oriented approaches. In the end, everyone loses: The community is stuck with the inappropriate building, the street has its context injured and the architect is stuck with reactionary rules that may not actually address the problem which his or her building created.

“What we have learned firmly from our work in West Hollywood,” concluded Winogrond, “is that pedestrian life, healthy urban life, succeeds through linkages: one building linked to another linked to another. To the degree that individual buildings present obstacles to that linkage, our success is hampered.”

Lagreco replied in a letter that the urban design issues involved were indeed complex. Noting also that West Hollywood was evaluating a requirement that in commercial zones, the ground floor of all developments contain retail, the architect went on to make a number of points he hoped would be considered.

While stating that “the concept of sustaining and intensifying activity along the street is, in my opinion, critical to the life of the city,” Lagreco contended that a multi-use facility such as 8981 “has requirements for privacy and security as well as a responsibility to the street.” He also cited problems with parking requirements, among other items.

There was a further exchange of letters, with Lagreco taking exception to some of Winogrond’s statements. “The irony is that 8981 Sunset is exactly about linkages and your (arguably) one-sided interpretation of that attempt is testimony to the difficulties involved.”

In turn, Winogrond reiterated his objections to the design of the ground floor while stating his appreciation of the architect’s “willingness to enter into this dialogue, especially in the light of the harshness of some of my comments.”

In one of his replies, Lagreco enclosed a copy of an excerpt from the architecture treatise, “A Pattern Language,” in which author Christopher Alexander discusses the idea of fronting a street with a private terrace. This “was what we were trying to do,” added Lagreco.

For the record, architectural guru Alexander recently came out with a new treatise entitled, “A New Theory of Urban Design” (Oxford U. Press: $39.95), in which he declares that the single overriding rule is that, “Every increment of construction must be made in such a way as to heal the city.”

Now to me, that statement had the tartness of real lemons with which to make a tasty jug of lemonade.