‘Chichi’ Architecture : Los Angeles in Search of Stylish Face

When the New York architect first showed off his big, bold scheme to expand Los Angeles’ historic Central Library, the city’s official design connoisseurs thought it was, well, certainly big and bold. True, they asked for A Statement, but this seemed, to them, more like A Shout. Try again, they told the architect. This is a library, after all.

Some months later, the Cultural Affairs Commission again found fault, this time over plans for Fire Station No. 29 to be located at Wilshire Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue. A more appropriate location, the commissioners suggested, might be Dullsville. Spark up that firehouse, they told the architect. This is L.A.! This is Wilshire Boulevard!

And this is, in essence, a new age for the way Los Angeles looks at itself--preening, ambitious, and above all fussy.

Public’s New Attitude

Could this be--dare we say it--a golden age? . . . Could be. After all, the city makers say, destiny seems to be smiling. Certainly the elements are here: All that Pacific Rim money. All those “designer-label” architects. All those mistakes that need correcting.

And most important of all, the public’s new attitude.

“We don’t want the city to look like it does anymore,” declared Merry Norris, who heads the city commission that ordered redesigns of the library and firehouse. “There are precious few buildings one can point to with pride. It’s important to make this a city of which to be proud.”

Dozens of architects tell the same story. Gone, with startling speed, is the free-wheeling, anything-goes mentality that made metropolitan Los Angeles an eclectic, maligned, sprawling hodgepodge of forms. The enterprise of architecture, once a collective shrug of the shoulders, a mumbled “whatever,” has become the politics of architecture--contentious, sometimes militant.

Change in Psychology

What is happening, architects suggest, is not just a fad, but a change in the city’s basic psychology. Los Angeles, after an awkward, protracted adolescence, seems to be shedding its trendy tendencies, groping for a more permanent, more classic sense of style. Simply put, the city is growing up.

But it’s ironic. At a time when the two great, indiscreet charms of Los Angeles--money to be made, glory to be had--are beckoning the world’s elite architects, few criticisms seem more damning than “designed by committee.” And yet there are more committees doing more second-guessing than ever. And more committees are on the way.

“I’ve never had so much help!” Tony Anthony, the very patient architect of Fire Station No. 29, quipped during one public meeting. Discussion soon devolved to the color of window trim: Should it be sky blue, forest green or slate gray? Anthony stayed calm.

Arguments over architecture--especially matters of aesthetics--have a way of veering from the profound to the picayune. The larger question concerns urban design, the all-encompassing concept of how architecture shapes a community, determining how it looks and works.

It’s not just Norris, not just her commission--every Southern Californian, it seems, is suddenly an urban design critic. . . . Complain about a mini-mall lately? Comment on the changing skyline? Get stuck on the freeway and scream into the ozone?

Fussiness takes many forms. It can be seen on the skyline where sculpted forms are going up amid the simple, bland boxes of the recent past; in the actions of public bodies--as in how, for example, the eminent New York firm, I. M. Pei Partners, was commissioned to design the huge expansion of the Los Angeles Convention Center; in the elaborate design competitions for projects as varied as the planned Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Pershing Square renewal; in the strengthening movement to preserve the better architecture of the city’s past.

Think back. For decades, the tradition hereabout was to bulldoze old buildings; what mattered was real estate, not history. We who lived in the proverbial fast lane just did not seem to care much about things that, after all, just stood there. A skyline mostly meant billboards, bright gas station signs, the occasional doughnut shop crowned by a giant doughnut. This was a place, some critics suggested, best viewed at 65 m.p.h.

But of course, the old, gray fast lane, she ain’t what she used to be. Now the traffic jam culture is making an impact, translating into the politically potent slow-growth movement.

Fussiness for the Masses

Slow-growth means fussiness for the masses. It means a great deal of political hassle about where development goes, how big it is, what it looks like.

“People aren’t just reacting to the density of development, but to the fact that a lot of new developments are really poorly designed and a blight on the landscape,” said City Councilman Michael Woo, considered a slow-growth advocate.

At first blush, slow-growthers and architects may seem like natural enemies--one bristles at development, the other does the blueprints. Indeed, there are often conflicts. Prominent Los Angeles architect Jon Jerde, for example, is having a hard time persuading Westsiders that an expansion and bridge for the Westside Pavilion would be good for their neighborhood. In Hollywood, Woo has angered constituents with a design competition to build subsidized apartments. Neighbors want a park.

But in a greater sense, architects and slow-growthers have forged an alliance against the sort of developer who is primarily interested in maximizing short-term profits with cheap, insensitive projects.

Woo’s official biography gives high billing to his “pioneer” role battling the vilified mini-mall--a classic case of the old mentality colliding with the new. Amid a flood of complaints from constituents, Woo, a city planner by training, last year pushed through a moratorium on the typically garish commercial centers in his Hollywood-area district.

Tough citywide controls soon followed--much too late, critics say. In some neighborhoods, however, mini-malls are still perceived as an improvement.

“Elected officials are responding to a new constituency,” Woo said. “People are just less tolerant of bad design. . . . And that, I think, is a good thing.”

‘Better Commissions’

Architects think it is a great thing, a phenomenon of monumental import. A public that is interested and involved--if sometimes critical--is essential for the execution of quality design on a grand scale, they say. “There might be fewer commissions because of slow growth,” one architect said, “but they will be better commissions.”

Although some developers, politicians and lobbyists have suggested that the slow-growth movement is a political fad, few architects seem to think so. No, they say, it is part cause, part symptom--an acceleration of the city’s natural evolution.

And slow growth is only one aspect of the fussiness phenomenon, architects suggest. Two other forces are also converging. One is the global renaissance of architecture as an art form. The other is the ascendancy of Los Angeles itself. “Los Angeles,” as Jerde puts it, “is a city becoming.”

This is where destiny smiles. Los Angeles--barely more than 200 years old and one of the world’s youngest big cities--is only beginning to realize its economic potential, say the business people, developers, politicians and other city builders.

“The advancement of civilization will depend on what we do here. I am absolutely convinced of that,” said Michael Rotondi, director of the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Santa Monica. “Every city, absolutely, has had its time. And it’s Los Angeles’ time now.”

Jerde, Rotondi and other architects speak in terms of “first-growth,” “second-growth” and “third-growth” cities. Los Angeles, they say, is only now maturing from a “first-growth” to “second-growth” stage. (For Los Angeles, “third growth”--a kind of holding pattern--is generations into the future.)

‘Hunting and Gathering’

During “first growth,” cities are essentially concerned with economic survival--”akin to hunting and gathering,” Rotondi said.

The great thrust of activity is economic hustle: Los Angeles at first evolved from an agriculture center to a commercial center. Hollywood later provided a core industry. The architecture of the 1920s--Central Library, the Art Deco Bullocks Wilshire building, the City Hall that could have been designed by Freud--suggest a city coming of age.

But the Great Depression brought a case of arrested development, and World War II transformed the Southland, bringing industry and people. From the wartime mentality rose a new ethic in architecture, no-frills and utilitarian. In Southern California, the post-war construction boom favored quantity over quality, function over form. The bustling real estate market meant that few commercial structures were built to last.

“Los Angeles was the capital of ephemera,” said architect Michael John Pittas, a consultant on the open design competitions for the West Hollywood Civic Center and Pershing Square renewal. “Everything was like a movie set.”

Commercialism married Hollywood kitsch. While New York erected towers of granite, we mass-produced drive-through hamburger joints dressed in gaudy plastic. Visitors would eat our hamburgers and shake hands with Mickey Mouse and take home slurs about a “plastic” place and “plastic” people.

Now, it seems we want to live that down. Now that Los Angeles, with no small help from Japan, seems to be fulfilling its destiny as a dynamic, diverse international economic center, architects say. The city is ready for the “second growth”--a celebration of itself in culture, arts, architecture. Although many Angelenos live in cardboard boxes on Skid Row, the public will demands a few more monuments.

The controversial new Robert O. Anderson Wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, designed by Norman Pfeiffer, is a case in point. Another is the red sandstone Museum of Contemporary Art designed by renowned Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and opened in 1986. (Recently shown: A retrospective of Los Angeles’ leading architectural lion, Frank O. Gehry, including his famous cardboard furniture.) In the future is the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a plum coveted by Gehry and four other world-renowned architects.

Reach New Heights

Los Angeles will quite literally reach new heights with Library Tower, an office building under construction. The tower, developed by Maguire Thomas Partners, will be at 73 stories the city’s tallest--a cylindrical, terraced centerpiece of speckled gray granite rising from the heart of downtown. The downtown skyline, now concave from many angles, will soon be convex. Nightfall will cue dramatic backlighting, illuminating the crown in the manner of New York’s Chrysler Building. At long last, the developer promises, Angelenos will have something to ooh and ahh about.

Library Tower was designed by the eminent Henry Nichols Cobb of I. M. Pei Partners--another sign of how competitive this metropolis has become. “Los Angeles,” as landscape architect Jean Marie Gath put it, “is a hot town.”

Only a decade ago, major jobs in the Los Angeles market tended to be dominated by the three big local firms--A. C. Martin & Associates, Pereira Associates and Welton Becket & Associates.

Gath’s firm, the SWA Group, is one of several national architectural firms to open offices recently in Los Angeles. Several developers, who are themselves often based elsewhere, are routinely recruiting marquee names like Pei, Philip Johnson, Cesar Pelli and Helmut Jahn.

But now several young local architects like Rotondi are developing reputations, and in the last few years several major firms based elsewhere has have opened offices in Los Angeles. The original big three still get their share: the Pereira firm designed Century City’s distinctive blue-glass tower, Fox Plaza, and A. C. Martin designed a 52-story tower for Mitsui-Fudosan, under construction downtown.

For architects, Los Angeles is something of an ego trip--a great collective sculpture on a vast horizontal pedestal. Every new tower changes the skyline and is visible for miles and miles.

“In Manhattan they’re building like crazy--but look what they’re starting with,” explained Pfeiffer, who in addition to the county art museum work received the commission for the expansion of the Central Library. Pfeiffer is a New Yorker who recently made the move to Los Angeles, opening a branch of his firm, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer.

‘No More Exciting Place’

“There is no more exciting place to be right now than Los Angeles,” Pfeiffer said. Downtown, especially, is underdeveloped--”a lot of raw land waiting to be formed. . . . The potential to develop a good urban place for people to be, it’s still here to be done.”

Unable to start with a clean slate, urban designers, aided by the eminent domain powers of the Community Redevelopment Agency, are nonetheless able to redo vast acreage with projects like the convention center expansion. The Community Redevelopment Agency and private developers envision a dynamic downtown. With $5 billion in construction under way or about to start, planners envision a vital new street life and a skyline to inspire post cards.

Much of the development is aimed at a buildup of downtown’s south side. The expansion of the Convention Center there is massive, fully tripling in size the present facility. Nearby hotel development and hundreds of condominiums and apartments should make Los Angeles a 24-hour city, planners say.

Also on their drawing boards is a network of landscaped streets and parks, along with a set of Spanish-style steps next to Library Tower, leading up Bunker Hill--all of which will, in theory, persuade downtown residents to leave cars in the garage.

So far, the political powers are smiling on the plans. But as Pfeiffer discovered, the process may be fraught with second-guessing.

The $152.4-million Central Library expansion project and Fire Station No. 29 were caught in the vortex of fussiness. Few suspected the Cultural Affairs Commission to raise objections. Under the City Charter, the commission has final design authority over all projects built on or over city property, but, like the public, had a reputation for acquiescence.

But the present commission, like the public, now takes an aggressive tack. In ordering a new design, the Cultural Affairs Commission essentially overruled Mayor Tom Bradley, the City Council, the Community Redevelopment Agency board and the Library Commission.

The chief criticism of Pfeiffer’s first scheme was that it was so showy and imposing--so “New York”--that it would overwhelm the original library, the landmark 1927 building designed by Bertram Goodhue. The commission’s argument received a big boost when the Urban Design Advisory Coalition, a group of Los Angeles-area architects including Jerde and other prominent figures, issued a unanimous report voicing “concerns” about Pfeiffer’s design. The Urban Design Advisory Coalition, organized in 1986 to promote quality design, is itself part of the fussiness phenomenon.

‘More Traditional’

In the end, Pfeiffer’s redesign was monitored by several Urban Design Advisory Coalition members. “Somewhat more traditional” is how Pfeiffer described the new library design. “It’s just not as far-reaching into the architectural unknown, but not less good.”

Fire Station No. 29 is a very different story. Originally, the overriding concern was to hold costs down, so architect Tony Anthony produced a design that could be repeated in seven locations. Six had been already been built when fussiness took hold.

Another architect, Thomas Michali, was the fussiest of all. Michali, who lives near the Wilshire Boulevard site for Fire Station No. 29, saw the boxy design as “an opportunity lost,” especially when compared to the fine firehouses of yesteryear. He rallied support of neighborhood groups and got Councilman John Ferraro’s office involved. The Cultural Affairs Commission, encouraged by the activism, instructed Anthony to alter the brickwork and color of the facade, making the firehouse more compatible with Wilshire Boulevard.

Today, Norris and other commissioners say the teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing were worth it. The library hassle triggered a 14-month delay, angering many officials, and may have added $500,000 to construction costs. The firehouse revision, Anthony estimated, may have cost another $60,000. But Los Angeles and the cause of quality architecture have been served, say Norris and other cultural affairs commissioners.

The library controversy prompted Bradley in June to appoint a design panel of several Los Angeles architects and designers to advise the Cultural Affairs Commission. The panel includes several Urban Design Advisory Coalition members.

Of perhaps greater concern to architects, however, is the profusion of community design review boards. Starting in 1989, every residential neighborhood, every commercial strip, every back alley will come under the influence of a citizens committee. The city planning department, under orders from Bradley and the City Council, has divided the 415 square miles of Los Angeles into 35 distinct geographic areas. Each area will have its own “community planning advisory committee” of neighborhood residents to revise community plans and establish community design guidelines for landscaping, lighting, commercial signs and other matters. The panels are also expected to review project plans on a case-by-case basis.

How persnickety those committees might be, no one knows.

‘Contradictory Messages’

“We are very fearful of layers of review committees sending contradictory messages,” said Kurt Meyer, the Urban Design Advisory Coalition president. “There is a fine line where (the political process) intrudes on creative design and does damage. . . . Would the Eiffel Tower have been built in such a critical environment?”

The problem, in the end, is one of reconciling design and democracy, which is precisely why West Hollywood and the SWA Group jointly sponsored a recent workshop titled, “Reconciling Design and Democracy.”

“We concluded,” Gath said with a laugh, “that both are important.”

At least some architects are worrying that Los Angeles may be taking itself too seriously. “I think we won’t have as much fun,” warned designer Sharon Landa, an appointee to the mayor’s committee. “But the greater value is a composed city. I love the idea of a composed city, like a symphony is composed.”

Landa hopes that the city’s new attitude won’t completely wipe out the tradition of goofiness. One of her works, for example, can be seen by motorists on Pico Boulevard in Rancho Park. The building, built in 1986, is a dental office like no other: “gum pink” in color and adorned with an oversized tube of tooth paste poking over a terrace and squirting the dentist’s name, Katz, in pasty white script.

A hygienic counterpoint, you might say, to all those doughnuts.

THE CHANGING LOS ANGELES SKYLINE

Designed by leading Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa, this early concept for the planned 42-story Gateway Center, to be located at the southeast quadrant of the Hollywood-Harbor Freeway “stack” interchange, satisfied fire safety laws requiring a helipad by adding an unusual rooftop extension. Developers, which include Aoki Corp. of Japan, TSA International of Hawaii and the Naiman Co. of San Diego, expect to break ground within a few years.

The 52-story, 760-foot building under construction at Wilshire Boulevard and Figueroa Street will serve as headquarters for the American subsidiary of Mitsui Fudosan, a giant Japanese real estate firm. Designed by Los Angeles-based Albert C. Martin & Associates, the building will feature two 75-foot-tall atriums as entryways.

The Biltmore Tower, designed by the Landau Partnership of Santa Monica and completed in 1987, and the monumental Library Tower, under construction, illustrate the trend toward distinctive, sculpted forms on Los Angeles skyline. Standing 73 stories and 1,018 feet tall, it will surpass by 160 feet the First Interstate Bank building, the city’s tallest structure. Clad in a speckled gray granite, the 1.5-million-square-foot office building, at 633 W. 5th St. north of Central Library was designed by I.M. Pei & Partners of New York for the developer, Maguire Thomas Partners.