Postcards From a City in Progress

In Los Angeles, great architecture has long been a privilege of an isolated, cultured elite. Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, Irving Gill and others have produced a remarkable range of experimental private houses--one that may be unmatched anywhere in 20th century history.

Few of the city’s public buildings, by comparison, had any lasting architectural value. In 120 years of civic growth, Los Angeles has produced a dozen or so overly ornate theaters, the towering phallus of City Hall, the elegant Beaux Arts library and the Malibu Getty, an idiosyncratic museum at the ocean’s edge, the vision of a reclusive oil magnate living in England.

But during the past few years, Los Angeles’ civic landscape has undergone a startling transformation. As the $1-billion Getty Center was opening its doors in 1997 in Brentwood, construction was starting up on Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Jose Rafael Moneo’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels--all major works by world-renowned architects.

More important, a sense of civic flowering has spread beyond a few powerful downtown institutions. In Little Tokyo, for example, Santa Monica-based Thom Mayne is designing a children’s museum as part of a new Art Park anchored by the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary. Across town, both the Malibu Getty and the UCLA Hammer Museum in Westwood are planning major renovations by Machado Silvetti and Michael Maltzan. And in Pasadena, the Art Center College of Design has hired Gehry and Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza to create a new library and technology building. Even the Los Angeles Unified School District--never considered an advocate of high design--has hired Mayne and the team of Robert Mangurian and Mary Ann Ray to design several new school buildings. All of these architects are important creative talents. Together, they are rapidly raising the architectural standards by which the city’s civic landscape is measured.

The result is a city of growing architectural depth. And while it is true that Los Angeles continues to produce buildings such as Staples Center and the Colburn School of Performing Arts--models of mediocrity--there is reason to believe the city has turned a psychological corner. L.A. has finally come to accept that thoughtful architecture is a vital part of a healthy civic fabric. The issue now is how far that momentum will carry.

No current project sums up that aura of promise like the proposal for a $200-million renovation and expansion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Unveiled last May, the project’s list of architects competing for the commission includes many of the most celebrated in the profession: the Paris-based Jean Nouvel, Berlin-based Daniel Libeskind, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, and Americans Mayne and Steven Holl.

The deadline for the competition proposals is Aug. 27; the architects will then formally meet with museum officials to discuss their designs in mid-September.

Practically speaking, just reorganizing the campus will be a daunting task. As architecture, LACMA is one of the most dysfunctional museums in the country. Its buildings are a confusing maze of mismatched styles. Its galleries have the feel of leftover rooms, making it an awkward place to view art.

But LACMA is more than a conventional restoration project. With its location midway between downtown and Santa Monica along Wilshire Boulevard--the city’s historical spine--the museum stands at the center of the city’s cultural life. It is also L.A.’s largest encyclopedic museum, with collections in European, Asian and Modern art. As such, the rebuilding of LACMA is an opportunity to entirely rethink the role that art plays in the city’s increasingly complex cultural identity.

The notion that architecture is a vital component of a city’s civic status is relatively new in Los Angeles. In 1982, the Getty’s announcement of the probate settlement of the then-$1.2-billion trust, the largest in American history, dramatically raised the city’s profile among art institutions. The Getty immediately revealed plans to build a vast new art center in Brentwood, ensuring that architecture would be part of that package.

The next year, the Frank Gehry-designed Temporary Contemporary (later renamed the Geffen Contemporary) opened in Little Tokyo. Housed in a 55,000-square-foot former warehouse, the Temporary Contemporary was originally scheduled to close in 1986, when the Museum of Contemporary Art’s permanent structure on Grand Avenue opened. But the Temporary Contemporary’s unexpected popular appeal convinced MOCA to keep the building, and it soon became a permanent fixture downtown. Its raw, unpretentious interior seemed to embody the informality of the city, and it proved that Los Angeles had an architectural community as inventive as any in the country.

Soon, a number of younger talents emerged on the scene. Architects such as Mayne, Eric Owen Moss and Frank Israel firmly established L.A.’s place at the center of American architecture. Their work--mostly houses--was highlighted in glossy magazines across America and Western Europe.

When the city was hit by a wave of catastrophes in the early 1990s--riots, earthquake and economic downturn--it did nothing to slow that progress. On the contrary, the 1994 Northridge earthquake led to an influx of federal money to kick-start the rebuilding process. And Los Angeles’ civic leaders soon began to see architecture as a means of boosting the city’s faltering image.

In June 1996, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony selected the respected Spanish Modernist Moneo to design the $75-million Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Grand Avenue. That October, MOCA opened a show on Gehry’s design for the Walt Disney Concert Hall, marking the launch of a major capital campaign to revive a project that had stalled two years earlier after problems developed with the working drawings.

Finally, two events put Los Angeles architecture firmly on the world cultural map. In fall 1997, the Getty Center opened in Brentwood and became an instant popular success. Designed by Richard Meier, the Getty’s crisp, Modernist forms stood somewhat apart from the city, a temple to high art perched high an a hill. Yet it served as a symbol of the city’s cultural arrival.

Almost simultaneously, Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao opened in Spain, reaffirming Los Angeles as a center of architectural creativity, even though the fruits of that labor were 5,800 miles away.

By then, architecture had established itself as a permanent feature of a broader cultural dialogue taking place in the city.

Los Angeles’ emerging self-confidence stood in sharp contrast to the period of civic renewal that created the original LACMA in the 1950s. Those efforts were mainly spearheaded by Dorothy Chandler, wife of then-publisher of the Los Angeles Times Norman Chandler. The socialite launched the ambitious fund-raising drive to create the city’s first performing arts center, which still carries her name.

By the end of the decade, several other events were reshaping the city’s identity: The Brooklyn Dodgers defected to L.A., LACMA decided to abandon its Exposition Park location for its current Wilshire Boulevard site, and Otis Chandler took over The Times with the goal of turning it from a local rag into a newspaper of national standing.

Such changes reflected a sense among the city’s cultural and business elite that if Los Angeles was ever to establish itself as a world capital, it would have to re-engineer many of its civic institutions. But serious architecture still was not part of the equation. Dorothy Chandler, for one, seemed relatively indifferent to who would design her beloved Music Center; that decision was left to the county Board of Supervisors, which picked Welton Becket, a competent local firm, but one that proved unable to create a visionary design.

LACMA’s new home, which opened in 1965, was equally disappointing. Designed by William Pereira, its three main buildings were scattered around an elevated concrete plaza, set in a 20-acre park. As architecture, the buildings were the height of mediocrity--drab concrete boxes. Perhaps more important, however, they had no discernible relationship to either Wilshire Boulevard or the surrounding park. The design seemed to ignore the site’s greatest assets--its connection to long-standing L.A. themes: its sprawling landscape shaped by the car, its blend of natural and man-made environments.

To some degree, such failures can be blamed on the general state of American architecture at the time. By the 1950s, Modernism had largely been stripped of its utopian aspirations. In the hands of a myriad of corporate offices, what was once a potent aesthetic and social movement had become a formula for cheap, functionalist designs devoid of any real complexity.

But Los Angeles was burdened with another problem--a lack of cultural self-esteem. New York had the Metropolitan Museum of Art; San Francisco, the opera. Los Angeles, by comparison, was largely a cultural wasteland, making civic leaders apt to turn to places such as New York for guidance on what a modern metropolis should look like. The failure of the LACMA and Music Center designs is in part due to the fact that they were modeled on New York’s Lincoln Center, an urban project with little relevance in L.A.’s suburban landscape.

In subsequent years, the LACMA campus went through a series of transformations that further contributed to its problems. The large reflecting pools that once surrounded the original buildings were drained soon after the museum opened, when oil was discovered seeping in from the nearby La Brea tar pits. More buildings were added during the 1980s, capped off with the Anderson Building, a limestone and glass-block structure that permanently altered the museum’s appearance along Wilshire.

By 1995, when Andrea Rich became the museum’s president and chief executive, it was clear that the entire complex had become dysfunctional. Rich quickly set out to change all that. She began an extensive evaluation of the museum’s functional requirements, eventually concluding that the layout of the entire campus would have to be rethought.

Rich then began to assemble a list of potential architects, embarking on a whirlwind tour of museums across the U.S. and Europe--something that recently has become a sort of prerequisite for museum boards. After narrowing the list to five finalists, Rich offered the architects free range to explore creative solutions for the design.

But despite Rich’s ambitious start, obstacles remain. The biggest is money. The museum plans to launch a major capital campaign in the fall, soon after announcing its selection of an architect. So far, LACMA has allotted $200 million for construction of the new building and $100 million for the endowment--all of which needs to be raised.

But LACMA may find it impossible to fulfill its ambitions within that budget. Consultants on the project, who have compared the museum’s scheme to others across the country, say implementing the entire master plan could cost double the projected amount. And museum officials now admit that construction may have to be broken into several phases. Under such a timetable, the museum would have to launch yet another campaign to complete the design.

That means the success of the new LACMA will ultimately rely as much on the goodwill of the city’s philanthropic community as on the talents of the architect. That does not bode well for LACMA, because Los Angeles has a long-standing reputation as a tough town in which to raise money.

“Private contributions play a smaller role in funding big institutions in L.A. than in other metropolitan areas, and in the past, government dollars have made up the gap,” said Laura Zucker, executive director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. “That doesn’t surprise me because the more established the community, the more established its philanthropic tradition becomes--and L.A. is a young city.”

LACMA board member Eli Broad, one of the museum’s largest donors, put it bluntly: “We can’t raise more than [the $300 million total] in this community.”

Then there is the competition itself. Hiring a star architect to design an architectural icon has become commonplace for art institutions today. The Guggenheim Bilbao and London’s Tate Gallery of Modern Art may have achieved some global fame in part because they look seductive in pictures. But they will endure as architecture because they are thoughtful, compelling designs. Rich and her board will have to look past the seductive images and try to understand the deeper ideas behind the designs. That means having the courage to take a risk, to be open to the unknown.

Four years ago, New York’s Museum of Modern Art faced a similar challenge. It concluded a high-profile competition for a $650-million renovation and expansion of its 53rd Street campus by choosing a tasteful design by Japanese modernist Yoshio Taniguchi. In the process, the museum had rejected an early proposal by Koolhaas as too radical. Such a conservative choice may ultimately work there. After 70 years as the flagship of 20th century Modernism, it has lost its aura as a cutting-edge institution. LACMA, despite its 40-year history, has no identity. In that sense, the creation of a new campus should be seen as an opportunity, not a danger.

Los Angeles’ changing cultural image is part of an even broader trend. Once sequestered in monotonous rows of suburban tract houses, its residents are increasingly starved for the social contact that is fundamental to the urban experience. Pedestrian shopping districts sprouting up all over the city--with quaint boutiques and sidewalk cafes--are as much about communal interaction as about shopping. L.A., once a city of introverts, is becoming more extroverted. That shift in attitude is a natural outcome of L.A.’s increasing densification as well as of the urban roots of many of its new inhabitants.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles’ cultural scene has never been healthier. The city remains the world’s great laboratory of residential design. Its artists rank among the most talented anywhere. And there is a deepening awareness of the city’s architectural past. A decade ago, developers were indiscriminately tearing down many residential landmarks. Today, they are prized collectibles.

The best buildings going up today mirror the complexity of that landscape. Each represents a vastly different view about the contemporary city. Gehry’s Disney Hall and Moneo’s cathedral, for example, two buildings that are rising within walking distance of each other, could not be more different in terms of the values they embody. Disney Hall’s flamboyant forms are a delirious celebration of urban chaos, while the cathedral’s stoic exterior suggests a desire to retreat into a more tranquil past.

The question is whether that level of architectural insight will spread beyond cultural and civic institutions. Massive commercial developments, such as the Trizec Hahn project at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, and “The Grove” marketplace at Fairfax Avenue and 3rd Street, have traditionally remained outside the reach of intelligent design. Staples Center, one of the landmarks of 1990s L.A., is an unimaginative structure. Drab offices such as downtown’s Reagan Building are still the norm, not the exception.

What the current building boom presents is seemingly unlimited possibilities. The school district plans to build 50 or so new schools in the coming decade, and many have yet to be designed. Los Angeles continues to suffer from a shortage of new housing. And a number of promising design competitions have been launched downtown, including one for a new Caltrans headquarters alongside City Hall.

The fate of such projects won’t rest on LACMA. But the success of its redesign would confirm that Los Angeles is committed to establishing a new standard for its built environment. Should LACMA fail, it would send a disheartening message to those who have long been aware of the city’s cultural potential: that architecture, the great social art, remains a luxury not all civilizations can afford.