A Vision That Differs From Trump’s : Architecture: A UCLA-based planning firm, involved in the dispute over the development of the Ambassador Hotel site, takes an innovative role in shaping L.A.’s growth.

When it comes to the fate of the famed Ambassador Hotel and the future of Wilshire Boulevard, mega-developer Donald Trump’s New York money may talk loudly. But another voice--that of the UCLA-based Urban Innovations Group--already is having its considerable say in the contentious debate about the way Los Angeles should grapple with its growth.

Architect Rex Lotery, who has led a UIG team that recently completed a four-year urban design study of central Wilshire, offers a vision both precise and passionate for the boulevard.

Standing under the entry canopy of the now-shut Ambassador, Lotery observes that “Wilshire is L.A.’s spine, its grand boulevard, that runs from downtown to the sea. It’s vital that the future development of this central section of Wilshire, pivoted on the historic Ambassador Hotel, should be carried out in an integrated and coherent fashion that encourages its resurrection as the Westside’s vibrant heart.”

Commenting on Trump’s confirmed suggestion that he might consider building the world’s tallest skyscraper on the hotel site he recently acquired, Lotery says: “Wilshire is no place for such overwrought ego statements. A huge high-rise would overwhelm the humane scale of the boulevard, which we at UIG consider its prime urban virtue.”

The imaginative Wilshire Center Plan--which was a UIG commission for a group of local property owners and now is under review by the Los Angles City Planning Department--recommends an integrated, pedestrian-oriented style for Wilshire’s stores, restaurants and office entrances.

It recommends bolstering the life of the street, which has declined because of the deterioration of once-affluent, surrounding neighborhoods, with better security and by promotion of public performances. And it urges that commercial, residential and recreational spaces be mixed to encourage a truly urban atmosphere, including a strong segment of affordable housing for the area’s complex ethnic population.

That UIG was tapped for such a complex study illustrates the niche filled by the unusual student-professional firm. The plan, if adopted by the Los Angeles City Council, will play a critical role in deciding development in the Mid-Wilshire area.

“To put it bluntly, we refuse to be anyone’s hired gun,” Lotery says of UIG. “Whether we’re paid by developers, public agencies or community groups, we insist on our right to make recommendations our clients may not welcome. We also insist on involving everyone in the planning process, including those who may oppose our client’s interests.”

That approach already has made UIG a welcome player in the Wilshire Boulevard fray, says developer Wayne Ratkovitch, the leader of Wilshire Stakeholders Group, the local property-owner coalition that has sought its own stake in the area’s future, in part by commissioning the UIG study.

“Their ground rules are tough, but vital to the perceived fairness of the way things are done,” he says of UIG, adding the firm’s “presence is calming to all the parties concerned. It lowers the temperature of contention by guaranteeing a result in which everyone’s consulted and taken into account. And the group, by reputation, embodies those ideals of urban design that are increasingly vital to L.A.’s future as a livable city.”

UIG has a special relationship with the UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning. Lotery is a UCLA faculty member; students from the architecture and planning schools work part time in UIG’s Westwood offices.

UIG’s intimate, yet arm’s-length relationship with UCLA is supervised by a five-person board, headed by architecture dean Richard Weinstein.

Founded in 1971 by UCLA architecture dean Harvey Perloff as, in his words, “a clinic focused on providing a good educational and research environment for students,” UIG has three main aims:

* To provide students and faculty with practical experience in real projects.

* To carry out research in architecture and urban design.

* To engage the UCLA planning school directly with the community.

Perloff imagined UIG as the architectural equivalent of a teaching hospital. He combined the experience of design research institutes, such as those at Houston’s Rice University, New Orleans’ Tulane and Stanford, with the notion of architectural internship in an active professional practice, much as medical students spend part of their training in wards and operating rooms.

In a typical year, up to 40 students pass through UIG’s offices, in batches of five and 10. Students work a maximum of 16 hours a week and are paid up to $10 an hour.

Graduate student Gregory Petroff says his work with UIG “keeps me grounded in reality. And its emphasis on large-scale urban-design issues has sensitized me to the wider city, beyond the boundaries of a particular project.” He added that the UIG office is “highly professional but also fun.”

Twelve full-time architects and planners make up the professional core of UIG. It also collaborates with outside architects, such as Charles Moore, Brenda Levin and Gensler Associates in the design of high-profile projects, including the Beverly Hills Civic Center expansion, the Oceanside Civic Center and the proposed Craft and Folk Art Museum on Wilshire Boulevard.

UIG’s mix of commissions is unusual for a professional practice. Master plans for several Southland cities, including Santa Ana, Monterey Park, Chino and Redlands, jostle on the drafting tables with award-winning designs for rehabilitation of eight Skid Row hotels and a bunch of private houses, and a visionary scheme for a bike riders’ elevated Veloway circling Westwood.

Architect Peter Lassen, project planner for the nonprofit Skid Row Single-Room Occupancy Housing Corp., describes UIG as “very professional, socially sensitive and easy to work with.” The UIG-designed hotels for the corporation, concentrated in downtown Los Angeles around 5th Street, have gained national acclaim for their fusion of economic rehabilitation, humane layouts and pleasant style.

“We do the Skid Row hotels for minimal fees,” Lotery says, “because we believe it’s important work. Design (for the corporation) must strive to avoid an institutional look that might depress desperate people even further. It’s part of UIG’s mandate to create socially responsive architecture in unglamorous areas often ignored by good designers.”

Architects who criticize UIG complain about its UCLA-subsidized competition with other professionals. Such critics suggest that UIG, with its staff salaries paid partly by the university and its cheap student help, can undercut fees that a commercial practice must charge to survive.

This complaint has dogged UIG since its inception, says Edgardo Contini, its former president and Lotery’s predecessor.

“They claim we use ‘slave labor’ of underpaid students,” Contini says. “But we pay our kids the standard rates for unqualified assistants.”

Contini believes that the complaints have lessened over the years as UIG has established its niche in the design community: “The profession now accepts us as an honorable and reputable collective colleague.”

Oddly enough, UCLA itself was slow to take advantage of UIG’s expertise. Excoriated by critics for the dullness of many of its newer buildings, UCLA’s Regents long overlooked a chance to tap talents of its own designers.

“I guess, typically, they felt we couldn’t be much good in the real world, if we were academics,” Contini says dryly.

But in the last two years, UCLA’s attitude toward UIG has changed. The group has completed a master plan for the northwest campus, where most student housing is located, and for a patient-family guest house to serve UCLA Medical Center outpatients and their families.

Duke Oakley, UCLA’s campus architect, says UIG is “deeply knowledgeable about the campus and aware of the value of good environmental design. It’s a unique kind of inside-outside relationship, intimate yet utterly professional. UIG brings a particular sensibility to the humane development of UCLA as a mini-city connected to its surrounding districts.”

Beyond the campus boundaries, UCLA dean Weinstein sees UIG as a “prime advocate for the larger good of the community, overriding the boundaries of narrow interests, whether public or private.”

Weinstein envisions a major role for UIG in urban design projects, such as the Wilshire Center Plan, and in development of innovative social policy, especially in affordable housing.

“I see UIG as one leg of a triad that includes the UCLA architecture and planning school and our newly established Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies,” Weinstein says. Together the three autonomous entities would form an applied research team, with Los Angeles as its living laboratory.

“We’ve yet to get the triad fully active and collaborative,” he says. “But when we do, I believe we’ll play a vital role in the evolution of the city, one that no other group is quite able to match.”