ARCHITECTURE : Simplicity Sets City Restaurant Apart from La Brea Hodgepodge

Josh Schweitzer likes things that are simple and bold. When he and former partner David Kellen were asked to design City Restaurant on what they saw as the very frontier of culture, La Brea Avenue, he sketched a diagonal cutting through what was then a warehouse. The result is a space you understand as soon as you see it, whether driving by at 40 m.p.h. or entering its cavernous expanse.

City is the successor to a hole-in-the-wall cafe of the same name opened on Melrose Avenue by chefs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken. By 1984, they had made a name for themselves with food that borrowed the brashness of South-of-the-border and Indian cooking and gave it an urbane elegance. The 5,000-square-foot warehouse seemed the right size for their ambitions, so they hired Schweitzer and Kellen, formerly with Frank Gehry, to transform it into equally urbane architecture.

On the outside, their strategy was as modest as it was simple. The front of the barely ornamented building was stripped bare. It offers only a neon-lit name to identify the establishment.

The real sign for the restaurant is its missing storefront. The actual metal and glass wall has been pulled back a dozen feet beyond the stucco face of the building, and in between is a little terrace. This unexpected open space gives a depth to the modest little building that makes it stand out along the rush of the avenue.

On the south facade, facing the parking lot, are three windows that get larger as the space gets smaller, making the building stand out as you drive north on La Brea. The windows act as an automobile-scaled sign while emphasizing the changes of scale on the inside.

Inside, the long, diagonal stroke divides the space into two pieces. The north part is a dense container of entry, kitchen, bathrooms and offices. A “knuckle” in the middle of this line becomes a foyer for all of these functions, drawing patrons and staff, men and women together as they move to their respective places.

lots and slices, as well as a glass dessert display case and a red leather banquette, give the diagonal a molded presence.

By keeping all of the support space to one side, Schweitzer and Kellen opened up the rest of the building, leaving an uninterrupted expanse of simple, open space. Only a rather monumental bar, clad in black terrazzo, anchors the room.

As you enter along the diagonal, peekaboo windows allow you to survey the action around this bar. You then shift, confronting the whole space at a glance and, the maitre d’ willing, finding your way through the social tides spread out in a sea of 140 pseudo-primitive chairs designed by the architects. The angle and the exposed bowstring trusses above you make the space seem even deeper than it is.

A recent renovation of the 7-year-old restaurant consisted of painting one wall green and another mustard yellow, while a little balcony that peeks out over the whole scene is blue, so that what Schweitzer calls “the new building we placed in the old building” has taken on an even more sculptural quality.

Schweitzer is not an especially subtle architect, nor does he want to be. He revels in designs that are big, bold, colorful, cheap and even playful. The result, at least at City Restaurant, is a seriously simple space, a clear and monumental oasis in an otherwise confusing world of the city.