Arts Park Theater Design Poses a Major Risk : Striking design alienates environmentalists, but brings panache to project in search of artistic credibility

Thom Mayne is growing agitated. He’s beginning to wave his hands.

“It blows my mind,” he says.

Mayne and partner Michael Rotondi head the Morphosis architecture firm of Santa Monica. Their avant-garde style--as evidenced by the cancer-care center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and such Los Angeles restaurants as Kate Mantilini and Angeli Caffe--has earned them numerous awards and an international reputation for radical work.

“ ‘Unique’ is a better word,” Mayne says. But he quickly adds, “It seems that a lot of our work produces controversy.”

Morphosis again finds itself amid uproar, and that is why Mayne is agitated. Two weeks ago, the firm won a competition to design the theater for Arts Park L.A., a proposed cultural center that would be built among 60 acres of rolling hills in Sepulveda Basin.

Arts Park would include a museum, open-air amphitheater, arts center and workshops. Three other firms were selected to build those structures.

But it is Morphosis’ proposed theater that has attracted immediate attention.

Most of the five-story, 10-acre structure is subterranean, but its uppermost structure juts aboveground in a splay of grids, fins, elevated walkways and “thrusting circulation bars.”

The model incited sharp debate among the competition’s nine jurors. Several said they were awed by its architectural merits, while another argued vigorously that the design clashes with the basin’s natural surroundings. The Sierra Club, which has filed suit to block Arts Park, reacted angrily when the Morphosis model was unveiled June 9.

“My impressions were basically . . . ‘Star Trek.’ It doesn’t seem to go with the land,” said Jill Swift, president of the Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club. “When I looked at it, I had the distinct feeling of power-line easements that go across the Valley. It crams down our throats another building that is out of place.”

At the eye of this storm, the theater represents potential risk and potential triumph for Arts Park.

The complex would be built on public land controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Federal guidelines mandate that all construction in the basin blend with surrounding greenery, and the foundation must gain Army Corps approval for its project. The competition juror who voted against Morphosis, Sheila Murphy, is an Army Corps official.

Plus, the federal approval process includes public hearings, so widespread opposition could block the project.

On the other hand, the theater’s striking design brings panache to a complex that is looking for attention and about $50 million in donations. Morphosis’ international reputation lends credence to the project.

“When you are proposing to do what we are setting out to do in this community, it’s monumental, and you’re going to have all sorts of reactions--delight and dismay,” said Linda Kinnee, executive director of the Cultural Foundation, the private, nonprofit group that is trying to build Arts Park.

The foundation--composed of car dealers, bankers, executives and art denizens--has been working eight years in its quest to build facilities that would lure world-class symphony orchestras and ballet troupes to the San Fernando Valley. The organization and its proposed complex are no strangers to controversy.

Community groups have long worried that Arts Park would bring traffic and noise to their neighborhoods.

Furthermore, Sepulveda Basin is the last large block of green space in the Valley, so the foundation’s desire to build anything there has met opposition. Special-interest groups, like Fans of the Basin, are fighting to save the open space. The Sierra Club has argued that the project is better suited to a commercial area.

“The basin has a skyline and horizon and expanse. Now it is going to ‘mimic the discontinuity of 20th-Century culture,’ ” said Swift, quoting from a Morphosis-written text that accompanies the model. “I can get on a freeway and see that.”

Two designs that lost to Morphosis would suit the basin better, Swift said. A model by Suzuki-Ramsey, of Newport Beach, depicts a theater rising gradually in clusters of rounded, grass-covered roofs. The New York firm of Henry Smith-Miller, which designed a third entry, consulted with the Sierra Club before preparing its model, which houses all of Arts Park’s structures under one roof.

“The environment, community, social issues . . . we believe the design of something goes hand-in-hand with all these issues,” said Henry Smith-Miller. “This is one of the most important projects in the United States, and we thought it would be worth our effort to bring these issues to the forefront.”

The Sierra Club and other opponents say that the selection of Morphosis’ theater amounts to a slap in the face, evidence that the Cultural Foundation is ignoring environmental concerns.

“I would have hoped that because of the controversy regarding loss of public land, there would have been some effort made by the foundation,” Swift said. “Unfortunately, they didn’t make any effort. They chose something that will make a splash on the cover of Architectural Digest. But it’s out of place, out of sync.”

This kind of talk gets Mayne’s hands waving.

“How could the Sierra Club be upset?” he asked. “It means they can’t understand the work.”

Morphosis’ model was designed for a competition and did not benefit from the usual give and take between client and architect, he said.

Thus the model is not an exact representation, only the essence of an idea. And that idea takes a building the size of Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and sinks most of it underground. What could be more responsive to environmental concerns, he asked.

But what of the unusual elevated walkways and artwork that rise aboveground?

The artwork is again a result of the competition, which required architects to work closely with artists and landscape artists.

Mayne said that any criticism of his theater and its artwork, designed by Coop Himmelblau, is premature. If the project moves toward construction, he will meet with a number of groups--including the Sierra Club--to discuss exactly how the theater would be built.

“I wouldn’t use the word compromise,” Mayne said. “The work will be refined and changed and altered and developed. It’s something to put down on the table to start a discussion.”

Foundation officials are confident that the theater will eventually earn approval, both through private meetings and federally mandated public hearings.

“We’ll give the community what it wants,” Kinnee said. “I believe we’ll even give the Sierra Club what it wants.”

Before the foundation reaches that point, it must raise funds for Arts Park. The foundation has yet to raise any construction money, and fund-raising experts have expressed skepticism that the group will be able to make good on its promise.

The project is gathering more and more support from Los Angeles’ arts community, though. Esther Wachtell, president of the Music Center, has been affiliated with the group for the past year. Steven Lavine, president of CalArts in Valencia, recently offered encouragement.

“It makes good sense that the San Fernando Valley would build a major cultural center of its own,” Lavine said.

“Given the huge land mass of this city, there is a real argument to be made that when the arts community here is fully developed it will involve both a concentrated downtown and a set of diverse, large-scale art centers of the sort that exist in Orange County, the Ambassador in Pasadena and so forth.”

Mayne says he hasn’t involved himself with such an overview yet. His attentions have been focused on providing Arts Park’s theater with the best architectural design he can conjure.

And after an hour of talking about the project, he begins to calm. His hands rest at his sides and his voice drops. After all, he says, Morphosis--with its penchant for unique design--has weathered controversy before. And most public projects incite heated debate.

“I think all good architecture should challenge you, make you start asking questions,” he says. “You don’t have to understand it. You may not like it. That’s OK.”