In love with a ‘normal city’

Architect Raimund Abraham was finally free. He had just finished an “agonizing” 10-year project -- construction of the Austrian Cultural Institute in New York -- and resigned his teaching position after 30 years at the Cooper Union.

But he came to Los Angeles and fell in love and, before he knew it, he was teaching again. The object of his affection is a building on 3rd Street downtown: the long, narrow Santa Fe freight depot, now the campus of the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

“Did you know it’s as long as the Empire State Building is tall? It wasn’t designed to be an architecture school. They told me: If you like it so much, why don’t you come teach? So I did.”

Along with teaching, he took on another project, “Stargazer,” an installation for the SCI-Arc Gallery.

Set in the middle of a concrete floor are his “towers,” seven 9-foot-tall blond wood boxes with angular cuts made by a computer-driven router and fitted together like three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles. Inside each is a red wooden chair, wedged at a tilt that replicates that of Earth’s axis.

On one wall are jagged black and white cutouts of constellations. On the opposite wall are photomontages of an “astronomer” -- actually pictures of a homeless person -- snugly tucked into a cardboard box on a fuzzy background that could represent a landscape or the night sky.

The chairs are not meant for sitting. They only represent the position of a stargazer. Beyond that, Abraham invites viewers to read his work as they will.

“It just needs to trigger your imagination,” he says slyly.

Abraham is less an artiste who insists that his work speak for itself than an intellectual with fully articulated views on his profession.

Walk the gallery with him and it’s like being in the presence of an Albert Schweitzer, with a touch of Mark Twain’s playfulness.

He was born in Austria and has lived much of his life in New York City but still dresses as a European gentleman. The gallery temperature feels close to 80 degrees, but he never removes his Panama hat or linen jacket.

His hair is snowy white, yet he talks with the verve of an art student, his green eyes lighting up when he presents his pragmatic philosophy of architecture, which can recall Paul Hindemith’s views on the art of musical composition.

“I think the whole artist myth is a contemporary phenomenon,” he says. “My father was a winemaker; there are shoemakers; I’m a worker. My concern is to state the problem and try to work on it.”

Still, he’s expressive when he talks about his life in architecture. He loves New York: “You feel liberated. There’s no historic overload like in Europe.”

And like his fellow expatriate Austrian architects -- Richard Neutra and Rudolf Schindler -- he loves L.A. “It’s a normal city. When you go to Brooklyn, you’re not in New York anymore. But if I’m in the Hollywood Hills, I always feel I’m part of L.A.”

The highly opinionated Abraham says:

* “Vienna has become like Disneyland. It’s a perfect tourist city.”

* “All architecture is an obstruction of the horizon.”

* “I don’t need to build to verify my ideas. It’s more to defend my ideas over the hostile forces of construction.”

Never mind that he has won a host of national and international design competitions -- the Municipal Arts Society of New York; the Stone Lion Award at the Architecture Biennale in Venice -- and some prestigious second prizes, including one for the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The one thing he wants people to see and fall in love with is “Stargazer.”

As Abraham exits the gallery on his way to meet friends for kaffee stunde, you can almost hear Marlene Dietrich warbling “Falling in love again” as he strolls. You also can’t help wondering where his gaze will light next, and what new object will capture his heart.

*

‘Stargazer’

What: Installation by Raimund Abraham

Where: Southern California Institute of Architecture Gallery, 960 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles

When: Open daily, 1-9 p.m.

Info: (213) 613-2200