The quiet legacy of the late architect Gin Wong, who helped shape L.A.'s postwar cityscape

2017-09-11T19:43:00-04:00

In other ways — in almost every other way — Wong’s career was a study in complexity. Political and ethnic complexity, mostly. And the complicated question of credit in architecture: Who gets it, who doesn’t and who has the authority to hand it out. [...] If not for the persistence of that narrative, Gin Wong’s contribution to postwar L.A. would be far better understood. It’s that simple.

In a recent column, Christopher Hawthorne highlights the quiet legacy of architect Gin Wong, who passed away September 1 at the age of 94. Wong worked as director of design for William Pereira in the 1960s before opening his own firm in 1973. Some of his projects include LAX's original design in the 1950s, the swooping Union 76 gas station in Beverly Hills, the ARCO Tower, and the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, to name a few. In stories like Wong's, Hawthorne questions the “tricky conversation of authorship, which remains stunted in architecture”.

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The quiet legacy of the late architect Gin Wong, who helped shape L.A.'s postwar cityscape