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Entertainment & Arts

2010 in review: Christopher Hawthorne on architecture

From a distance, this Las Vegas building appears to employ the same riotous curves and colliding forms that Frank Gehry has relied on, as a formal lexicon, for perhaps too long; but to walk through it and to think about it in terms of the studies on brain disease that go on inside its labs is to realize that Gehry, 81, has entered a productive new chapter in his long career, taking on a raft of bracingly somber themes including aging, decay and even death.

From a distance, this Las Vegas building appears to employ the same riotous curves and colliding forms that Frank Gehry has relied on, as a formal lexicon, for perhaps too long; but to walk through it and to think about it in terms of the studies on brain disease that go on inside its labs is to realize that Gehry, 81, has entered a productive new chapter in his long career, taking on a raft of bracingly somber themes including aging, decay and even death.  (Isaac Brekken / For the Times)

Architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne’s picks for best and worst designs of 2010.

CicLAvia

Borrowing a model from Latin American cities, organizers managed to win city approval to close down nearly eight miles of L.A. streets for most of a Sunday in October. The turnout of at least 100,000 exceeded everyone’s expectations, offering another sign of a growing constituency in Los Angeles for changes to cityscape benefiting cyclists and pedestrians. As many as three more CicLAvias are planned for 2011, the first on April 10.  (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The Expo Line, taking shape

None of the stations promise to be architectural landmarks, but the Metro rail line running west from downtown to Culver City, part of which will open in 2011, is now plainly visible as an architectural and civic fact on the ground. So is the way that the line is poised to remake the landscape alongside it — not to mention tired assumptions about Los Angeles being too in thrall to the private car to travel any other way. Delays and cost overruns have pushed back the opening, but a generation from now this may look like one of the biggest civic bargains in L.A. history, not to mention a milestone in the city’s maturation.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

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