Floor Plan : An Incipient Museum of Architecture Has the Ideal Site--Now It Needs the Wherewithal to Keep the Doors Open

You could call it the would-be miracle on 34000 Via de Agua: the hopeful beginnings of Orange County’s only museum of architecture, housed in a 6,000-square-foot hexagonal building designed in 1966 by idiosyncratic Los Angeles architect John Lautner as the architecture and engineering center of a never-realized city called Alto Capistrano.

The potential miracle is in need of some angelic help, however. The fledgling museum--which expects to gain state nonprofit accreditation this winter--is in danger of losing its sprawling site early next year unless it can raise about $50,000 to help keep the doors open for the next six months until other funding becomes available.

Since summer, Robert Imber, a 47-year-old former telemarketing manager at the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, has been paying below-market rent out of his own pocket to the sympathetic owner of the long-neglected, recently restored building.

Imber had dreamed for a decade of opening a place where people could learn about his lifetime passion. He wants to “create a dialogue between architects and the general public,” he says, and to show “everything from [Italian Renaissance architect] Palladio to pagodas.”

Although Southern California art museums regularly mount architecture exhibitions, the region lacks an institution specializing in the subject, apart from the year-old MAK Center for Art and Architecture, L.A., at the Schindler House in West Hollywood.

Supplied with a temporary exhibition of models, photographs, paintings and furnishings by late San Diego architect Sim Bruce Richards, the Museum of Architecture opened to the public in November on weekends only.

That show closed last week, but Imber and his fellow board members--Tom Moon, chairman of the architecture department at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo; John Lomelli, a Los Angeles lighting consultant and engineer; and Janine Rosenberg, a graphic artist from Mission Viejo--are lining up programming.

Upcoming events include lectures by cutting-edge Culver City architect Eric Owen Moss (tentatively scheduled for Jan. 15); Albuquerque, N.M., maverick Bart Prince (sometime in February); and Helena Arahuette, who has run Lautner Associates in Los Angeles since the architect died in 1994.

Exhibitions in the works range from a winter 1998 retrospective of designs by the Newport Beach-based Blurock Partnership (best known for the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa) to an April showing of “Process-House,” developed by Olsen Sundberg Architects in Seattle.

That show illustrates the steps involved in designing a house, from the clients’ initial contact with the architect to discussions about budgets and construction changes.

More ambitious plans include organizing a major exhibition on McKim, Mead and White, the famous early 20th century New York firm.

But that will require a professional staff, which can’t be hired until the museum’s nonprofit status is a done deal and money begins to come in from foundations and other sources. Imber says a conservative first-year budget figure would be about $200,000.

Someday, Imber says, the museum will have its own collection of models, plans, videos and other material related to late 20th century Southern California architecture.

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In the meantime, there is a great deal of preparatory work to do--so much that Imber’s initial leave of absence from the philharmonic last summer turned into a permanent split.

Attendance at the annual meetings of the American Assn. of Museums for the past few years has given Imber opportunities to learn the ins and outs of museum administration--and to schmooze. He now has museum-world friends from Tennessee to Germany on whom he can call for advice.

Imber, who must find other donors to help pay the rent and lend credibility to the project, insists the museum will carry on, whether it can stay in the Lautner building--”even if we end up in a storefront.”

Potential angels are invited to call (714) 443-5288 or write to the Museum of Architecture, 34000 Via de Agua, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675.