Westweek’s Smiling Faces, Empty Spaces

Westweek is here again, a time for the diverse design community from around the world to gather at the Pacific Design Center and check out what’s hot, what’s not and what’s happening in Los Angeles.

But despite all the smiling faces, trays of wine and cheese and comments to the contrary, all is not good news at the PDC and scattered design showrooms, offices and studios beyond.

The cutbacks and back stabbings that the industry is experiencing nationwide are also being felt here, our location on the Pacific Rim notwithstanding.

The reality for design in Los Angeles is that the tide is low and the surf rough, except, of course, for a few freestylists drifting along on hot-air-filled inner tubes.

Still, the view of the surf from the sun-bleached beaches looks good, especially to the visitor escaping the mud slinging and cold of the industry’s trenches in New York and Chicago.

Attending the annual design show and accompanying symposiums and social events this week will be about 30,000 interior designers and decorators, artisans and architects, facility managers, furnishing manufacturers, product representatives and others who compose the design trade and profession.

Although Westweek is closed to the public, the week’s events do affect us.

Design has become a $31-billion-a-year international industry, and much of what will be previewed and talked about in the coming week most likely will be on display in showrooms next year, and in residences, offices, hotels and restaurants the year after.

Making Westweek perhaps a little more pertinent to Los Angeles this year, if not somewhat self-serving, is the theme of its symposiums: “L.A. 20/21: Design. Business. The Next Century.”

The implication of the advance press releases is that if you want to get a sense of the direction design is taking you have to tune into L.A.

“Outsiders have called it the City of Tomorrow, meaning that Los Angeles is today what other cities will be like in the future,” declares architect Cesar Pelli, whose worldwide practice was jump-started in Los Angeles with the design of the distinctly skinned and styled PDC.

Explored by a variety of panels and personalities will be the “new international culture” that is Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on those “who are currently creating works and projects which are influencing creative communities and various audiences around the world,” states Judi Skalsky in the introduction of the Westweek program.

According to the program I received last month, Skalsky is identified as the senior vice president, marketing and design for the center, and is given credit for the Westweek ’90 concept.

But that program has since been amended, with Skalsky’s name omitted. Since writing those optimistic words and shaping the optimistic-toned events, she has been let go, a victim of the cutbacks now being felt throughout the industry.

Despite the happy face being put out at the PDC, for some this year’s Westweek will be more a wake than a celebration.

No one wants to go on the record about the problems there or elsewhere, but to see them, all you have to do is walk the echoing floors of the 1.2-million-square-foot PDC, drive up and down Robertson Boulevard, and talk to salespersons, account executives, manufacturers and designers.

Empty showrooms are everywhere, persevering dealers are being circumvented by manufacturers giving deep discounts directly to major customers, ad lineage in most of the trade publications is down sharply (33% in the last three years), and work scarce, with design offices undercutting each other.

As for the unleased space, that in part, is a result of the recent mergers and bankruptcies, particularly in the contract furniture field, where in the boom years of the 1980s there had been unbridled expansion. This has included Steelcase Corp. acquiring a variety of smaller companies, CorryHiebert liquidating and SunarHauserman going bankrupt.

At the same time, rents have skyrocketed at the PDC from $10 or so a square foot a year 10 years ago, to about $40 today, plus hefty operating costs making it the highest in the United States.

“To meet their rent they (manufacturers and showrooms) are cutting ads,” complained an editor of a prominent trade publication.

And while the ads are down, the number of shelter magazines are up, having proliferated in response to the expanding industry of the 1980s. Now they are being hung out to dry, prompting desperate attempts to get a piece of the dwindling advertsing pie.

Making major format and/or editorial changes within the last year to strengthen their appeal have been Architecture, Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, HG (House & Garden), Interior Design, The Designer and Contract magazines.

Others are reaching out further and further for new markets, witness the entry of Metropolis into California and Metropolitan Home becoming sort of the MTV of shelter magazines.

A result is that out of fear of offending advertisers or subscribers, almost all have given up any critical commentary in favor of purposeless pap. Increasingly, it is becoming harder to tell the ads from the articles; indeed, many appear to be just warmed-over press releases.

Meanwhile, the business of design professionals is becoming more mature and demanding, which some feel is not necessarily bad.

“Frivolity is no longer ‘in,’ ” confided a facilities executive. “Given the cutbacks, we are not prone to indulge some ego expression of one of your (Los Angeles’) shining lights. Besides, we have found they tend not be able to produce products or projects that work, beyond generating some publicity.”

Still, as the Westweek program indicates, L.A.’s image is hot, and it’s the place most designers want to be these days.

“They are parachuting in, willing to work at the foot of a master for minimal wages,” observes architect Jack Hillbrand, who has practiced on both coasts and is now in Los Angeles.

“The result is that the market is flooded at a tight time, bringing down everyone’s salary. It takes new arrivals about a year to find out they are being had, but by then there is a new crop of graduates eager to sacrifice themselves, at $6 to $10 an hour.”

Making the situation even tougher is that, besides the flood of young architects, Los Angeles also is attracting an increasing number of world-renowned designers, who, to the dismay of local firms, have snared some major commissions here.

“It’s become wild and woolly, and fiercely competitive,” said Barbara Casey, whose public relations firm has represented a variety of designers and architects.

Maybe beyond all the usual platitudes offered at Westweek, there will be some honest, open discussion of the tough issues facing the design industry and Los Angeles today. It is time the industry stop trying to dazzle itself and others.