Gateway to L.A.: If the Ideas Are Wildly Eclectic, Well, So Is the City

Should the welcoming symbol of Los Angeles be a giant baseball glove stretched across the Hollywood Freeway? A four-block-long dollar bill? Or a transparent bird whose wings extend from the Broadway to the Alameda Street off-ramps, with an egg dropping in the vicinity of Los Angeles Street?

Those are three of the 150 imaginative designs received by the West Coast Gateway Committee, a blue-ribbon group appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley to create a $40-million monument over the freeway in airspace donated by Caltrans.

“After three days of deliberations, the jurors have chosen the unexpected,” committee chairman Nick Patsaouras intoned Tuesday as he unveiled the designs of the five semifinalists at the County Museum of Science and Industry.

Well, not all of the unexpected were chosen.

The baseball glove and the dollar bill were rejected by the international jury of 16 architects and authors. But the bird, created by Vilen Kunnapu of the Soviet republic of Estonia, survived.

“There was a big fight about the bird,” admitted juror Sophia Zarabouka, a Greek artist. “But there is imagery to this for me.”

The semifinalists, besides architects from Austria, New York and Massachusetts, include Neil Denari of Los Angeles.

“I’ve always been kind of obsessed with doing architecture on freeways, so I’m very happy,” Denari said. “They’re so vital to the life of a city and they’re such beautiful structures, minimalism par excellence.”

Norwegian judge Sverre Fehn said Denari’s untitled machine-like structure fits in with the automobile culture of Los Angeles: “You have the feeling it’s something that moves.”

Denari said his work would be composed of a giant video screen facing drivers, a building offering “real occurrences” (live performances, a library, food stands) and one emphasizing “global communications” (cinemas, technological demonstrations).

Such a combination pleases Patsaouras, who stressed that he is seeking more than a “Statue of Liberty West.”

The monument, he said, should be (1) “a symbol and testament” to the city’s immigrants. (2) a pedestrian link between Chinatown, El Pueblo de Los Angeles Park, Little Tokyo and the Civic Center, and (3) a meeting place featuring parks, museums and theaters.

Another semifinalist, Irmfried Windbichler of Austria, suggested towering fountains of water that would create “a landmark to be seen for miles by approaching motorists”--and would also drown out the noise of those motorists, or so the sponsors hope.

Of the others still alive in the competition, Dagmar Richter of Cambridge, Mass., termed her work part “linear structure projecting the historical district” and part “vessel . . . for social gathering.” And the entry of Hani Rashid of New York was praised by Norway’s Fehn for its “theaters, galleries and general use of open spaces. You almost put the visitor on the stage.”

Not on Home Ground

Oddly, 10 of the 16 jurors were from foreign countries and some of those had never seen Los Angeles before their three-day visit. Many of the entrants, including Estonia’s Kunnapu, have never visited Los Angeles either, prompting some reporters to question how they could catch the flavor of the city.

However, Patsaouras pointed out that the five designs will be refined after the semifinalists come to Los Angeles, although it is not clear whether Kunnapu will get permission to leave the Soviet Union.

The winner is scheduled to be announced Nov. 6. In the meantime, all 150 entries are on display in the museum’s Armory Building this week.

The competition was financed with the help of a $100,000 contribution from the Japanese-owned Shuwa Corp. The committee hopes to construct the Gateway with corporate contributions in the same way that the 1984 Olympics were financed.

The Gateway, its sponsors announced when the competition opened earlier this year, should make “the approach by car” on the freeway “as well as the ride into and under the Gateway . . . memorable.”

The ensuing entrants from 39 countries came up with a variety of concepts that were nothing if not memorable.

They included a 400-foot-tall gold aluminum star (“akin to a lighthouse in a harbor”), an “Everyman” with hands outstretched for several blocks, 12 inflatable sculptures (the number inflated would indicate the hour of the day), a “solar-lumetric” Rainbow Arch with an interior subway, and a nude man and woman holding up the globe.

Even with the five semifinalists decided upon, French judge Roland Schweitzer sounded as though he believes much work lies ahead.

While Los Angeles has an identity, “we don’t know exactly how to show this identity,” he admitted. “We have to find it.”