Packing Up and Heading West : Otis is making plans. So is the Taper. Why the Westside? Movers say that’s where the fans are. But some critics worry about arts ghettoization.

When the Otis College of Art and Design announced last summer its intention to move from its longtime location beside MacArthur Park and find a Westside venue, the shift was part of an ongoing westward migration of Los Angeles’ cultural institutions from their old central city sites.

Otis’ projected relocation was matched by the Mark Taper Forum’s decision to seek a Westside branch for theatrical performances in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station arts complex. Now, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has declared its interest in moving its “Green Umbrella” experimental music series to a renovated Culver City warehouse.

Is this westward migration a sign of L.A.’s increasing cultural and social ghettoization? Or is it simply that the architecture of high culture is following the majority of its audience?

“Most of the people who come to the Music Center live on the Westside and in the West Valley,” said Ernest Fleischmann, managing director of the philharmonic. “We have to go where the audience is.”

For the past year, the philharmonic has been collaborating with developer Frederick Smith and architect Eric Owen Moss in a plan to convert an industrial warehouse in north Culver City into a flexible performance space. Dubbed “the Green Umbrella,” after the philharmonic’s 11-year-old New Music series, the project is an imaginative match between experimental art and avant-garde architecture.

When it opens later this year, the Green Umbrella will occupy a segment of an innovative, 8-year-old project by Smith and Moss to recycle a series of dilapidated industrial structures in Culver City. The project, which Smith calls “Conjunctive Points,” occupies two clusters of factories, warehouses and workshops dating from the 1930s and ‘40s.

One cluster, on Ince Boulevard, includes the old Paramount Laundry, the landmark Lindblade Tower and a complex of renovated offices occupied by an international public relations firm, the Gary Group. The second cluster on National Boulevard consists of 300,000 square feet of old workshops and warehouses that Moss has redesigned into an extraordinary series of bravura buildings housing small studios and offices.

Described by Architectural Record magazine as “a choreographic tour de force,” the Conjunctive Points project has won several design awards and has attracted international attention. The New York Times applauded it for its skill in reversing the area’s economic decline and for providing “tangible lessons” about the ways in which L.A. can build a second layer of living architecture upon the debris of its past.

Described by Smith as “a vibrant new community of professionals from a variety of commercial and artistic fields,” the Culver City project will eventually include a theatrical component hosting performances of music, plays and dance. The Green Umbrella is intended as the first element in this proposed cultural community.

Entered under a converted factory facing Hayden Avenue known as the Stealth Building, the Green Umbrella will occupy a medium-sized renovated warehouse tucked away in the midst of the National Boulevard complex. The plan consists of a performance space seating 550, designed as a flexible shed with movable seats, plus a lobby, foyer and backstage area.

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In addition, there will be a fanciful structure poised over the building’s front corner, constructed of wooden trusses salvaged from the old building, a steel pipe frame and canopies of green vinyl that symbolize an upside-down umbrella. The structure is covered with a skin of rippling glass recycled from the roof of the existing building. Construction of the $3-million project is due to start soon.

The umbrella’s interior is a series of Escher-like staircases that seem to wind back in upon themselves, punctuated by projecting platforms overlooking both the converted shed’s interior and an outdoor performance area.

“The umbrella feature is both the symbol of the project and a platform for imaginative and unusual performances,” Moss explained. “It may seem weird, but it will actually be a very practical space focused on outdoor musical or theatrical events that can be held in the open space in front of the building.”

Moss said the configuration of the indoor and outdoor performance spaces evolved in many discussions with philharmonic director Esa-Pekka Salonen and avant-garde impresario Peter Sellars. Sellars insisted that the architecture must be kept simple, allowing performers to freely create their own fantasies. On the other hand, they all agreed that the building should have a distinct personality, “neither neutral nor proscriptive,” Sellars said.

Even though it is named for the philharmonic’s New Music program, the Green Umbrella will host a variety of cultural events. According to Smith’s wife, Laurie Samitaur Smith, the intention is “to invite people who’re making a statement and involve a lot of artists who can’t now find a place to show their talents.”

The Smiths, who will finance the maintenance of the facility and program the Green Umbrella’s events, also intend to invite performers and shows from across the country. “We could host the run of a contemporary experimental opera like Daron Hagen’s ‘Shining Brow,’ about Frank Lloyd Wright,” which was recently performed in Chicago, Laurie Smith said. “Maybe we’ll have this opera about an architect take place while the renovation is in progress, among all the uproar of construction.”

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In the 65,000 square feet of warehouse space behind the building, the Smiths plan to create some small “black box” theaters, backed by support offices and studios, where young actors can experiment. They will also provide residences for visiting artists.

Frederick Smith sees the growing number of cultural venues on the Westside as an encouraging trend. “I think it brings the audience close to where most artists live,” he said. “Culver City’s population mixes whites, blacks and Latinos, so it’s not that this place represents a move away from cultural diversity.”

But Adolfo Nodal, manager of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, worries that the westward migration epitomized by the Green Umbrella project increases the trend toward social isolation.

“You can’t blame the philharmonic and the Taper for going where they hope to find most of their financial support, especially in these lean times,” he said. “All the same, I’d like to see them reach out beyond the Westside, to the East Valley, South-Central and East L.A. After all, that’s where their future audience growth must come from.”

The philharmonic’s Fleischmann said the Music Center’s downtown location remains a vital bridge between L.A.’s increasingly diverse communities. “However, though we’re absolutely committed to our central city focus, we have to be flexible,” he said. “As a matter of reality, we have to take account of the facts of L.A.’s changing cultural geography.”