L.A. Architecture’s Solid Gray Brigade

In an age when select designers are singled out as “starchitects,” celebrated in magazines and in art gallery retrospectives, it is easy to overlook the good gray brigade who set the style for much of what is being built around us.

The spectrum of mainstream designers is wide, ranging from those in large offices with staffs of more than 50 to others who prefer small and highly personal practices with only a few associates.

Two Los Angeles architectural offices--Dworsky Associates with 70 employees and Kanner Associates with fewer than 10--exemplify opposite ends of the size spectrum. Both practices are well-established and have won awards from their peers.

Dworsky Associates was founded in 1953 by Daniel Dworsky, now 60, a burly fellow who was a University of Michigan linebacker and defensive captain in 1947, and in 1948 when the Wolverines won the national championship.

Kanner was founded in 1959 by Charles Kanner, now 57, a shy man who is past president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects and a graduate of the USC School of Architecture.

Cues From Bauhaus, Le Corbusier

Dworsky and Kanner belong to the generation of post-World War II modernists which took its cues from the 1920s German Bauhaus and the French-Swiss master Le Corbusier.

Though its name may not be well known outside the profession, Dworsky Associates has created some of Los Angeles’ major public buildings including the Angelus Plaza residential complex on Bunker Hill (1982); the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX (1984); the Los Angeles Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank (1987); and the soon-to-be-completed Van Nuys Municipal Courts Facility.

The firm has also designed a wide range of commercial buildings, including the American Honda Corporate Center in Torrance, the Hewlett-Packard Regional headquarters in North Hollywood and the Northrop Corp.’s electronics division headquarters in Hawthorne.

Kanner Associates, reorganized five years ago as a father-and-son operation headed by Charles and 32-year-old Stephen, has won a reputation for a series of scrupulously crafted small-scale projects. Prominent among these are mini-malls on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica and Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills, and a series of sensitive remodelings of historic buildings in Westwood Village.

Dworsky served an apprenticeship in the early 1950s with prominent local early modernists William Pereira, Raphael Soriano and Charles Luckman. His first major commission was for a football stadium, the Crisler Arena, for his University of Michigan alma mater. The design of UCLA’s Drake Stadium followed a few years later.

“It was a toss-up whether I would become a pro football player or an architect,” Dworsky said. “Being a linebacker is good conditioning for a young designer. You learn to block the bull coming at you from all sides.”

Dworsky Associates, winner of the 1984 Firm of the Year Award given by the California Council of the AIA, is reaching for a livelier style beyond the boundaries of conventional modernism.

Recently Dworsky Associates was corporately reorganized to allow Dworsky more freedom from the pressures of administration while allowing the practice’s younger designers to keep pace with the advances of fashion.

Dworsky became chairman of the board of Dworsky Associates and director of design. The chief administrative post of president was created for principal Robert Newsom, 42. Below Newsom are a dozen stock-owning partners backed by six associates.

Powers, Influence, Leeway

“I recognized that younger people like Bob could go off and open their own offices, if they weren’t given more influence, power and leeway,” Dworsky said.

Influenced by a group of younger designers in its mid-Wilshire Boulevard offices, the practice has branched out with bolder designs realized in the Federal Reserve Bank and the Van Nuys Municipal courthouse.

The bank features a free-standing curved front red granite wall that gracefully reminds passers-by of the Federal Reserve’s crucial role as a fortress guarding the integrity of the U.S. currency. The courthouse has a 10-story glass frontage with a bow of glass bricks meant to symbolize the openness of our judicial system.

“In today’s highly competitive development climate, you have to be young and fit enough to go out there and grab the ball,” Dworsky said. “Being an aging defensive back just isn’t going to get you the play.”

Stephen Kanner is a third-generation architect. His grandfather, Herman, opened an office in Los Angeles in 1946.

Unlike his father, and despite a deceptively boyish countenance, Stephen Kanner is outward and assertive.

“Dad is more a design purist typical of his generation, while I tend towards the playful,” the younger Kanner said. “But we share a common ground in our commitment to the modernist tradition. Apart from that, we like one another a lot and work together well.”

Remodelers of a Landmark

The Kanners occupy the second floor of a Westwood Village complex they designed on Le Conte Avenue adjacent to the historic 1929 Holmby Building they recently remodeled. The Holmby’s Mission Revival clock tower marks the entry to the village from the UCLA gateway.

Stephen Kanner, appointed to the new Westwood architectural review board, sees the challenge in remodeling the Holmby, and several other historic local sites, as “essentially a restoration and clean-up of years of mess and neglect, to recapture the charm and essence of the original architecture.”

In contrast to their restoration work, the Kanners are reaching for a late-modernist idiom more in tune with the times. It is a style that remains true to its Bauhaus roots of clean, uncluttered surfaces free of historic references yet plays with the mannerisms of the modern.

A proposed Kanner design for the Montana Collection in Santa Monica breaks the composition up into a series of small street-edge pavilions with roof parking. Bright trim and towers of see-through glass enliven the basic white stucco wall planes. The Montana Collection is in tune with the scale of the street, yet makes its mark with simple design gestures like barrel-vaulted glass roofs and perky lamps.

Expressing the same ambition as Dworsky to “grab the ball,” but in a different strategy, Stephen Kanner declared that “We can work with anyone’s aesthetic to earn our bread and butter. At the same time, when we find a client willing to give us our head, we are overjoyed. Then we can really show our paces.”

The smaller practice, with less of an organizational overload and a leaner office overhead, can take more risks. While some of Dworsky Associates’ architecture may seem to have been designed by committee, Kanner Associates’ designs are often quirky and personal.

Still Idealistic

Yet after 35 years as a professional, in the inevitably institutionalized framework of his large practice, Dworsky retains a designer’s irreducible idealism.

“I am most intrigued by the essential mystery of architecture,” he said. “For me, built space will always be a kind of theater, a stage on which life is played, and played out. That’s why I keep on being an architect.”