According to a Dec. 28 article in the LAWeekly, Los Angeles restaurant institution Angeli Caffe is closing its doors. Owner Evan Kleinman searched for a buyer, but the LATimes reports that the last meal will be served on Jan. 13. Of course, no way to tell at this point what will happen to the architecture when a new tenant arrives...
Angeli was a very early Morphosis project, back when Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi were partners, and the hottest restaurant designers around LA [see this clipping from Sam Hall Kaplan]. Michele Saee was project architect at the time according to a 2009 interview in Dwell.
Photo below from the LATimes:
The Morphosis "morphopedia" [top photo also from Morphosis] states that: "A partial gridwork was added to the façade of a building on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles as an inexpensive way of making and marking an addition. The façade was meant to appear as if it predated the existing building. By using minimal means, it creates a series of shifts in foreground/background meaning. The interior of the restaurant seats forty-five in two sections, with a bar and kitchen toward the rear. Entry to the first part of this two-phase conversion covering two stores is through a door which has been suppressed and made invisible from the façade. All one sees from the street is a series of planes and a beam penetrating the outside wall from the inside." Full biblio, photos, and project address, for those who perhaps want to go pay their last respects, available here.
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2 Comments
Evan Kleinman shared a sweet story about the origins and history of Angeli, including a nice reference to Mayne and Rotondi, on her radio show Good Food last week.
Too bad about Angeli closing. It was one of my occasional spots for a late lunch or early dinner. It was intimate, comfortable and the architecture was interesting. A lot had to do with the scale. Angeli was one a series of restaurants done by Morphosis; the others were Verdi, Kate Mantelini, and 72 Market in Venice. Frank Gehry did Rebecca's about the same time.
It was a good and creative time for LA Architecture with a lot energy all around , the anticipation of each new project , and the defining the emergent LA post-modern or neo-constructivist style. This was also the time before the rude moniker of "Starchitect" And this was when LA stars were born, and began to mature. Exciting in retrospect
eric chavkin
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