Los Angeles, a medley of colors, cultures and lifestyles on seismic- grounds, and the
architecture had carefully expressed the feeling its time, but always on the horizontal.
Things are about to change. The skyline of this
unique city is being transformed.
Unique spatial experiences; asymmetrical plan and asymmetrical section; concrete
buildings that make their presence felt. These are some of the words used to describe the new architecture, and, driving about the city, it is difficult to disagree.
Disney Concert Hall, Westin Bonaventura, the US Bank Tower, the Garden Grove Church, and the list could go on.
From post-war modernism to today’s post-modernism the new architecture has steadily set about to
change the face of the metropolis.
Stainless steel curve, “sports cylindrical scenic elevators that rise from the concrete lobby … like missiles being fired from a silo”; glazed space frame walls and roof are some of the most daring and notorious developments in new architecture and the people who
create it are doing so from a different perspective.
Leigh Christy described the Disney Concert Hall as “a symbol of the area’s diversity and egalitarian qualities” and “a testament of the city’s cultural arrival.”
Indeed, in Gehry’s Concert Hall there are no private boxes. The hall hosts a democratic class where each seat is “visually and acoustically unique … to create a unique spatial experience”.
And what to say of the “Crystal Cathedral” as it has readily been nicknamed?
The Garden Grove
Church is “perhaps the first and most famous magachurch,” stated Douglas R. Hoffman in his article from “From Maybeck to Megachurches”.
The church is shaped like a four-pointed star and is humongous “measuring 207 by 415 foot and rising to a height of 128 feet.”
Sir Terry Farrell, a leading British architect once said, “Buildings, towns, and cities are the most powerful and moving elements of our existence. Yet cities are, and always have been, more than these: they are permanent, public, and shared in both expression and achievement. Architecture and urbanism … are our greatest achievement.”
The LA architecture has never been shy to show its achievements and, because of the seismic nature of the region, LA’s buildings have to be and look able to sustain the most powerful of earthquakes.
The emphasis of today’s architecture is in the keeping of a “classical” façade with dramatic space and modern materials. The result? “A poem of precariousness,” or so thought Herbert Muschamp when he set eye on The Box, Eric Owen Moss’ commercial office building.
What prompted the comment was “a large, tilted cube dramatically cantilevered on curved steel trusses.” (www.Vitruvio.ch)
Certainly a daring, but calculated move from one of the leading LA architects. And he’s not the only one testing and experimenting with the slants of the land.
Richard Meier has been working hard at it and, even if with less dramatic results, his Gagosian Gallery “… projects an insistent but subtle authority,” said www.archspace.com.
New, modern, and exciting buildings are all out for everyone to admire, touch, feel, exhale, and take in. But what’s in store the future of architecture?
Owen Moss has already started work on the Jeff/Jeff Towers. The two 22 feet tall towers “designed to create a loft-style feel” whilst keeping a close eye on the Richter scale and others, like Barton Phelps, wants their design to “absorb the energy” of their surrounds.
The names and people who contribute to the city’s make-up renewal are hundreds; all eager to create and invent original and imaginative work.
“Change is necessarily driven by ideas, and architects are in a unique position of participating in the shaping of businesses and institutional organisations … The practice believes in the architecture’s ability, through planning and design, to erode barriers between people, to promote ecologically responsible developments, and to uplift, inspire, and celebrate ordinary life.”(Clive Wilkinson)
More reviews about the A poem of preacariousness