Award Rhetoric, Building Realities

Local firms fared well in the annual design awards bestowed by the national American Institute of Architects (AIA) Wednesday at its national convention here. Faring less well was the awards process.

Of the 15 winners, four were from Los Angeles. They were Morphosis for the Kate Mantilini restaurant in Beverly Hills; Eric Owen Moss for a warehouse conversion in Culver City; Frank Gehry & Associates for a guest house in Minnesota, and Moore Ruble Yudell for a housing development in West Berlin, Germany.

There really were no surprises. Most of the projects honored were easily identifiable efforts previously spotlighted in other award programs and in the various professional publications.

This, once again, raised the issue of the predisposition of architectural juries, which these days appear to be more influenced by the promotion of specific projects and their architects than the design of the projects themselves.

Take for example Kate Mantilini’s, at the northwest corner of Doheny Drive and Wilshire Boulevard, which, while garnering a host of awards, has been the subject of numerous architectural articles, including a few of my own. I liked the project, in particular the way the “old “ building embraces the new, expresses the materials used, and creates a space not unlike a piazza.

“Inventive, strong and highly crafted, it is a challenging example of both the art of architecture and the use of art in architecture,” declared the AIA jury. “Drawing from the traditions of abstract sculpture, the architects explore surfaces, textures, shapes and light, creating a theatrical setting for dining and for people to see and be seen.”

Yes, but the restaurant does not address the street or the corner well, and both the terracing and, more importantly, the entrance, are awkward and unappealing. The restaurant as a stage set succeeds, but as a theater on a prominent street, it fails. The art of architecture may have been served, but not its function. I give it an “E” for effort.

More challenging and, I feel, more successful and deserving of an honor award is the design by Morphosis of the Cedars Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center at 8700 Beverly Blvd. The center, completed earlier this year, did get a mention in the annual Progressive Architecture magazine awards but little else. Restaurants, no doubt, are a much more appealing subject for architecture writers and editors than cancer clinics.

With almost no site to work with, the architects tucked much of the structure underground and under adjacent buildings. Nevertheless, the center’s sandstone-and-concrete-slab entry at ground level reads well, and the interior waiting room and chemotherapy treatment areas, despite being below grade, are attractively designed as if they actually were exterior spaces.

Throughout the clinic, in the shaping of both public and private rooms, in the use of light, the detailing of the fixtures and furniture, the selection (by the firm of Merry Norris Contemporary Art) of the paintings and sculpture, there is a laudable concern for the patient. And while the design does not try to hide the reality of the purpose of the clinic, it handles it with an honest sensitivity. The result is an exceptional hospital design.

Exceptional only in how the reality of the project has been distorted and cloaked by the rhetoric of the architectural press and the AIA jury is the award winning conversion of 8522 National Blvd., designed by Eric Owen Moss in association with Jay Vanos.

The warehouse project was described in a recent issue of Architectural Record as a pragmatic yet exhilarating rehabilitation, and by the AIA jury as a “sure-handed manipulation of natural light and fundamental geometric forms” that captures “the essential spirit of architecture.” The jury also praised the design for its imaginative use of “simple materials and carpenters’ details.”

It sounded good, but when I toured the project I found beyond a forced, awkward entry a poorly planned maze of spaces, flashes of overdesigned detailing, an attractive clerestory and skylight, a beguiling plywood-clad room and a very disillusioned construction foreman.

He noted that the project had cost nearly four times the original $260,000 estimate, due in large part to the arbitrary shaping of sheet metal, plywood and similar materials to create various “effects” the architect had insisted upon.

“When you do things like that, inexpensive materials become very expensive, and so does labor,” said the foreman, who preferred not to be identified. “If anybody should win an honor award for this job, it is the contractor, Kevin Kelley.”

I give the project an “S” and an “H,” for strained and hyped.

As for the Gehry design of a fragmented, metal, brick, plywood and limestone-clad guest house for an art patron in Minnesota, done in association with Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle of Minneapolis, the photographs of it I saw in a recent issue of House & Garden (now HG) magazine looked marvelous.

Most likely, the AIA jury that gave the project an honor award saw the same photographs, commenting that “this is a house interpreted as a sculpture, an experiment in organization and abstraction, a still life in the trees.”

But the Moss project also looked exquisite in the photographs that appeared in Architectural Record magazine, so I must withhold judgment until I have an opportunity to tour the house and talk to its users and maybe the builder. I am curious to know how the various materials fare in the weather there, and how it feels to live in a house set in countryside next to a lake and have so few and oddly shaped and placed windows.

I also hope someday to view the Tegel Harbor Housing in West Berlin, for which Moore Ruble Yudell of Santa Monica won an honor award. The 170-unit apartment complex was described by the AIA jury as “visually rich.” I trust it is, not for the sake of the jury’s credibility, but for the users, who, lest we forget, are both the ultimate jury, and critic.