Curtain Call : Arts Plaza Designer Sees Copper Panels as City Symbol

On a rubble-strewn ledge high above the Ventura Freeway sit 2,880 skinny copper strips designed to transform the Civic Arts Plaza into a regional symbol of culture, flair and vision.

The bright, narrow panels will soon hang on cables that cascade down the eastern wall of Thousand Oaks’ vaunted auditorium. With each breeze, they should flutter slightly, to suggest a rippling stage curtain.

Architect Antoine Predock predicts his one-of-a-kind copper sculpture could become a sort of city mascot, inviting visitors to stop in Thousand Oaks and check out the theater.

“When you look at the building from the Ventura Freeway, there’s a great temptation to put graphic signage there,” Predock said. “But that seemed too obvious, so we came up with the curtain, as a symbol of the celebratory concept of this building.”

In case the shimmering curtain doesn’t do the trick, Predock has designed other eye-catching features on the Civic Arts Plaza’s blocky beige walls.

Some embellishments have already emerged as workers begin to dismantle the heavy scaffolding. Others will become visible only when the theater opens in October, and audience members can roam past oddities like a rooftop reflecting pool or a concrete-and-green-glass zebra-striped window.

“It is truly a unique building,” Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski said. “I was astounded when I visited (last week) because there are so many features that aren’t apparent in the drawings.”

Once a harsh critic of the building’s design, Zukowski still says she’s “awe-struck because it’s so immense.” But she concedes that “it is improving as it settles in” and people get used to its looming silhouette.

If the Civic Arts Plaza’s profile has become familiar, however, the many funky design features promise to add an element of surprise.

On the western face, for example, workers recently unveiled a metal ladder-like structure and a series of protruding pipes that are designed to look like abstractions of Chumash pictographs.

Visible from the eastbound Ventura Freeway, the unusual sculpture is designed as a “timeless, abstract reference to earlier times . . . a mythical evocation” of the Conejo Valley’s history, Predock said.

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The so-called “pictograph wall,” done in zinc and Lucite, is intended to allude to a Condor Man wing, a starry sky and a writhing serpent, with a few geometrical shapes thrown in for good measure.

But not everyone gets it.

“It looks more like mounting for some other construction they’re going to do,” said sculptor Craig Leese, who teaches art at Cal Lutheran University and lives in the Civic Arts Plaza’s shadow.

Once he realized that the protruding metalwork is permanent, Leese said he concluded that the design resembles two worms attacking a comb in the sand.

“I don’t know if that’s very complimentary,” he added, “but that’s what it looks like to me. It serves the purpose of decorating the building, but I think they could have come up with something a little more eye-catching.”

The pictographs and copper curtain were added to the original design after construction began to soften the building and add more visual interest. The embellishments depart from Predock’s usual style, which relies on “very strong, geometric forms . . . very simple, very austere,” according to architectural critic Morris Newman, a Los Angeles-based writer.

“He represents a tendency in architecture that’s being debated right now--the idea of a building as a heroic object against the world,” Newman said. “Buildings like his are very masculine, very commanding.”

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As a counterpoint to the Civic Arts Plaza’s harsh outlines, Predock designed a series of gentle, even romantic, flourishes.

The two-stair towers are topped with dainty steel cages that look sharp-edged from the freeway but more whimsical up close. The beige-painted cages, officially dubbed trellises, are intended to balance the heavy mass of the auditorium.

Carrying the same motif into the outdoor plazas, Predock envisions potted vines climbing up zinc-wrapped columns and forming a green trellis. The garden theme will continue with a small reflecting pool on a nearby terrace roof. And in the park below, ceramic tiles decorated by local schoolchildren will wind through a meandering path.

Although Predock’s buildings are often more barren, Newman said he was not surprised at the many offbeat decorations. “I consider (Predock) a poet among architects,” Newman said.

Perhaps the most poetic element in the $64-million Civic Arts Plaza is Predock’s dramatic pictograph wall.

The plexiglass tubes representing celestial sparks will let light into the complex. On bright days, sparkling sun rays should shoot through the rods, dappling the floor outside the 1,800-seat auditorium.

Tall arts patrons can peek through the windows to catch glimpses of distant mountains--or the nearby parking garage, which partially blocks the pictographs.

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At night, the lighting scheme should work in reverse. Theater illumination will beam outward, penetrating the 2-foot-thick walls. The pinpricks of light will be visible from outside the auditorium, and will act as welcoming beacons as visitors enter the complex.

Not at all bashful, Predock said he was thrilled with the concept. “It’s really marvelous,” he said in a telephone interview from his New Mexico office.

Because his designs are so unusual, Predock has at times stumped the structural engineers and acoustics whizzes who must bring his sketches to life.

“It’s fun--up to a point,” project manager Ed Johnduff said of the challenges.

After weeks of testing, engineers still have not puzzled out the copper curtain. They have hung the cables and tested a mock-up, but they must tinker with the final design before installing the panels.

They expect the copper’s new-penny brightness to fade to a dull brown within weeks, so they do not think the curtain will distract passing motorists. “Even if you took a flashlight and stuck it up real close, you’d be hard-pressed to get a glare out of it,” said Bill Huston, another project manager.

But while they’ve conquered the reflection problem, they’re still working on other issues--like keeping the curtain quiet in the wind.

“Clearly,” acoustics expert Dave Conant said, “during a performance we don’t want to hear rattle, rattle, scratch, scratch, bang, bang.”

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Conant expects to have a solution soon, and the copper panels should go up by the end of the month. The City Hall portion of the complex will open in mid-September, and the auditorium will welcome its first audience in late October.

Meanwhile, residents are trickling by the site to take organized tours or just to gawk.

“We were all holding our breath” during the construction period, Councilwoman Zukowski said. “Certainly it’s a departure from what we’re used to in our little valley. (But) it makes more sense to me now.”