The Dome’s New Domain

The new ArcLight cinema-and-retail complex at Sunset Boulevard near Vine Street is the kind of project that has become all too rare today: a commercial development by a mainstream corporate firm that you can actually learn to like.

The $100-million project, which includes a 14-screen theater, health club, restaurant and outdoor cafe, all set around the newly restored 1963 Cinerama Dome, breaks no new formal ground. Nor is it brimming with new ideas.

What it does, however, is snatch up ideas that have been floating around in the architectural atmosphere for a decade or so and mold them into a design that works on many levels. Crisp in its conception, with a refreshing lack of fussiness, the project packs some punch. And it reminds even the most disheartened critic that it is not impossible to make everyday architecture that works.

Designed by Gensler, a 2,000-employee international firm that is best known for its commercial buildings, the ArcLight project had to accommodate a number of awkward site conditions. The Welton Becket-designed Cinerama Dome is a local landmark and could not be significantly altered. Two Brutalist 1970s-era concrete office buildings take up the corner of Sunset and Vine. And a local drive-through McDonald’s--its kitschy red roof floating above its parking lot--stands along Vine. (ArcLight’s developer tried to buy out the McDonald’s lease, but the fast-food restaurant’s owner refused to move.)

In effect, Gensler simply carved space out of the square-block development to make room for the existing buildings. The architects set the parking in back, in a six-story concrete structure along DeLongpre Avenue. From there, they cut a pedestrian courtyard through the center of the block, carving out more space around one side of the Cinerama Dome to provide access to Sunset.

Most of the activity is set along the internal court. The new cinemas, which feature the kind of stadium seating and big screens that are in vogue, are tucked behind the dome on one side, with a themed restaurant and health club on the other. (The restaurant, a Vegas-like concoction of compartmentalized fantasies that includes a karaoke bar, piano bar and disco, has, fortunately, yet to open.)

The simplicity of those moves heightens the tension between new and old structures. In back, a driveway cuts through one side of the parking structure to make room for the McDonald’s drive-through. Along the courtyard, a collage of sago palms, red leaf bananas and tree ferns line the base of the dome, interspersed with a series of “water walls” that are meant to dampen the noise of the boulevard. The swooping, curved glass facade of the restaurant and health club frame the courtyard’s other side. Its second floor tilts backward dramatically, exaggerating the upward thrust of the dome, which hasn’t looked so pampered in years.

The dome, in fact, remains the centerpiece. Its freshly painted stucco shell--a rip-off of Buckminster Fuller’s earlier geodesic domes--lifts you back to an earlier era of NASA launches and Cold War anxieties. (Which makes it an ideal place for escapist fantasies.)

These elements come together in the courtyard, which becomes a voyeur’s haven. The new cinema lobby is nicely over-scaled and overlooks the courtyard through a towering 40-foot-tall glass facade. A small cafe spills out from one side of the lobby onto an outdoor patio. Across the courtyard, gym rats peer down at the space from their exercise bikes. In back, four glass elevators, their forms sliding up and down like slow-moving pistons, lead to the various parking levels.

In short, everyone here is on display, so that going to a movie becomes the social experience it is meant to be.

Of course, there is nothing revolutionary about this. The pedestrian arcade is a mainstay of Hollywood theaters that dates to the 1920s. The parking structure, with its tapestry of chain link hanging from the exterior, is a virtual knock-off of Frank Gehry’s 1979 design for Santa Monica Place. Even the notion of viewing the city as a place of colliding forces is a well-worn contemporary theme, one that can be traced to the early works of greater talents like Jean Nouvel, Christian Portzamparc and Rem Koolhaas.

What is more, there are more than a few clumsy details in the ArcLight design. A beige faux stone wall that flanks the entry to the cinemas looks cheap and out of place. The streamlined pink and green signs that announce the complex along the street are tacky.

But to denounce the project for being derivative or for lacking refinement is to entirely miss the point. Over the last century, the role of breaking ground in architecture has been left to a relatively small coterie of avant-garde architects.

Such talents drove the profession forward and reshaped the architectural language for a rapidly changing society. In the process, they often elevated architecture to the level of art. The task of translating those visions into an everyday architecture for mainstream America, however, usually fell to bigger, more established corporate firms.

The heyday of such corporate architecture was the 1950s and ‘60s, when firms, including Skidmore Owings & Merrill, A.C. Martin and Welton Becket, were able to churn out high-quality architecture at a remarkable rate. At times, they produced legitimate masterpieces, such as A.C. Martin’s 1964 Department of Water and Power building, one of L.A.’s great Modernist landmarks.

In the last 20 years or so, that tradition has withered away. A new breed of Postmodernist architects began espousing a pasted-on neo-classical aesthetic, and their corporate clients were more than happy to reduce architecture to the level of superficial decor. Today, most of these designers have no sense of how to create vibrant urban spaces anymore.

The gargantuan TrizecHahn retail-entertainment complex at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue is a typical example. Completed last year with a whopping budget of $615 million, its maze of indoor and outdoor shopping corridors is a cynical attempt to trap the consumer in a frenzy of shopping. But even on that level, it doesn’t work. The effect is suffocating, and most visitors can’t wait to escape it.

It is in that sense that Gensler’s design is refreshing. The project is not high-minded architecture. It is a mall. But it is better than most malls today. Its human scale and blunt appeal prove that sensitivity to urban realities and a little knowledge of current architectural trends can go a long way in producing decent urban space. What you get is an agreeable place to take a stroll, go on a date, gawk at passersby and see a movie. We could use more of that.