State Architects Prevail at Coveted Awards

California architects have dominated the 1992 Progressive Architecture magazine competition, taking 13 of 22 awards for design, urban planning and architectural research.

Winning projects, the majority by Los Angeles architects, included a vintage car museum, housing for homeless families, a private guest house, a subway system station for Los Angeles, a house addition and a cultural institution in Paris.

The P/A awards, announced in the January issue of the magazine, are among the most prestigious in architecture. Held for the past 39 years, the competition is the only national contest focusing exclusively on unbuilt work.

“We recognize the merit of an architect’s commissioned work in its original form while it is still intact and uncompromised by budget or other concerns, and a primary objective is to provide an incentive for clients to protect and preserve the integrity of that design,” said P/A’s profession and industry editor, James A. Murphy. “In the process we have been able, fairly often, to discover vibrant new talent.”

The jury of eight architects who examined the 726 entries submitted by American and Canadian professionals, including 183 by Californians, applauded the quality and originality of breakthrough concepts but lamented the fact that there were not enough entries in the fields of housing, health and education worthy of major awards.

The 1992 awards showed a balance between firms previously honored and first-time winners. Selected with such well-known firms as Eisenman Architects and Ellerbe Becket, each taking honors for the fourth consecutive year, and Frank O. Gehry & Associates, were new winners Michael Bell Architect and Daly Genik Architects, both of California.

“Eight awards for architectural design were won by Los Angeles architects, three were for cultural facilities and three for single-family dwellings,” said Robert S. Harris, dean of the USC School of Architecture. “These are the kinds of projects which lend themselves to exploration about design and one expects they would stand out. Single-family homes always offer this kind of opportunity to be inventive and to think through at a scale in which the risks are not so great.

“What characterizes the winning designs is that they are very strong, have a sense of immediacy and enliven the senses. From a theoretical and architectural perspective, they are not ‘deconstructivist’ . . . that is, they’re not angry, not trying to make a statement about values and don’t make a reference to architecture of another time or place or to remote symbols as in post-Modern.”

Commenting on California’s dominance in the competition, Dean Richard S. Weinstein of UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning noted that “the ingredient that causes a particular place to produce a phenomenon usually is the presence of a creative figure who opens this opportunity for others. . . .”

Such a figure, said Weinstein, is Pritzker Prize winner Gehry, whose design of the American Center in Paris won a P/A architectural design award.

“(Gehry) has touched a responsive chord nationally and internationally that has helped to make architecture what it is and what it may become.

“The spirit that comes out of Los Angeles is positive, unembarrassed, lyrical, uncomplicated and free, but that is not to say it does not have its dark moments. However that may be, it’s done without sweeping anything under the rug.

“When you have a powerful creative cultural ecology, all the other plants survive,” Weinstein noted. “L.A. is a city that is not constrained by weather, with a history that is shorter and less traditional . . . with people who have come here looking for a freer way of life, and with a diverse manufacturing base and multiplicity of cultural groups that make it less of a requirement to be a part of any tradition.”

P/A Editor John Morris Dixon agrees that “this is California’s time” to shine, referring to this year’s sweep of honors as compared to the state’s two winners in 1990 and four in 1991.

While stressing the influence on architecture from professionals in the Philadelphia, New York and Chicago areas, Dixon believes California has become a larger center of activity in architectural innovation.

“There is also an influential synergistic relationship with the architectural schools of Southern California . . . USC, UCLA, SCI-ARC and Cal Arts that has drawn numbers of people to its tradition of independence and directness.

“Much of what has crested in innovative architecture has become evident in the work of Morphosis, Gehry, Franklin Israel, Eric Owen Moss and others . . . a fragmentation of forms coming together in a kind of collage or juxtaposition of forms,” Dixon said.

“When work is done that catches attention, it brings additional architects to that place and encourages clients also to go in that direction. Success breeds success.”

CALIFORNIA’S WINNING

FIRMS AND PROJECTS:

Architectural Design Awards:

Frank O. Gehry & Associates, Santa Monica.

Project: American Center in the Bercy section of Paris, a 188,000-square-foot artistic/cultural facility with performing and exhibit spaces, retail and restaurants. Judge’s comment: “It’s showing that you can do new buildings and they can be Modern and continuous simultaneously.”

Client: American Center.

Davids Killory Architects, San Diego.

Project: The Bridge, interim housing for homeless families in Escondido, adapted from the bungalow courts concept common to southwestern California. Judge’s comment: “There’s a dignity to this project that you don’t usually find with low-cost housing.”

Client: North County Housing Foundation.

Morphosis, California.

Project: Yuzen Vintage Car Museum in West Hollywood, a mixed-use project whose primary function is to house a collection of vintage cars. Judge’s comment: “I like it because it’s a hybrid building for a city like L.A.”

Client: Yuzen U.S.A.

Eric Owen Moss, Culver City.

Project: Samitaur Offices in southwest Los Angeles, expanded office space in light manufacturing area. Comment: “It’s a new and fresh approach urbanistically and it has good public spaces.”

Client: Frederick Norton Smith.

Michael Bell, Designer, Berkeley.

Project: David Lyman House and Gallery, Santa Fe, living quarters and two galleries for an art collector. Comment: “The designer investigates what the space is, what the frame is, what the inside is, as well as a Surrealist idea of inversion.”

Client: Dr. David Lyman.

Architectural Design Citations:

Frank O. Gehry & Associates, Santa Monica.

Project: Frederick R. Weisman Art & Teaching Museum, University of Minnesota, a 41,000-square-foot museum with exhibit space and auditorium. Comment: “It’s a shed, which I think is a good shape for a museum.”

Client: University of Minnesota Art & Teaching Museum.

Eric Owen Moss, Architect, Santa Monica.

Project: Guest house in Tarzana, a studio/office and private apartment for elderly parent. Comment: “It’s a collision of the cube and the sphere. It reminds me of carving a pumpkin.”

Client: Pamela and Richard Aronoff.

Ellerbe Becket, Santa Monica.

Project: Metro Red Line, Vermont/Santa Monica Station. Comment: “The architects have done a good job of making the below-ground space more than just a one-story tunnel.”

Client: L.A. County Transportation Commission.

ROTOndi, Los Angeles.

Project: CDLT, 2 house addition in Los Angeles, a new dining room, library, studio and bedroom suite. Comment: “An immensely imaginative project, because it’s actually questioning the way we do things . . . .”

Client: The Rotondi family.

Daly, Genik, Santa Monica.

Project: Topanga Canyon house, a single-family home with galvanized steel panels enclosing a 64-foot frame. Comment: “It follows the Eames House in the approach of ordering up a frame and then making an interior within it.”

Client: Jonathan Parid, Lori Cohen.

Jim Jennings Arkhitekture, San Francisco.

Project: Visiting Artists Suites, Oliver Ranch in Geyserville, Calif. Comment: “I’m attracted to this because of the Zen simplicity of the intention.”

Client: Steven and Nancy Oliver.

Urban Design Award:

Studio Works, Venice, Calif. and New York.

Project: Grand Center in St. Louis, a master plan to create a performing and visual arts center for the city. Comment: “It reconciles the American penchant for independence and pastoral ideals with the potentials of urban interdependence.”

Client: Grand Center Inc., St. Louis.

Research Citation:

R-2ARCH Designers/Researchers, Los Angeles and New Orleans; UCLA and Tulane University.

Project: Redefining the Place of Architecture in Community Public Healthcare, Research-Based Design. Comment: “The amazing thing in this one project is that the researchers work equally well in both spheres . . . computer printouts and pencil sketches, and that is rare.”

Client: Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, Office of Public Health.