Archinect - News

Finally complete, the Watts Towers’ restoration is a turning point for public art in Los Angeles

2022-12-06T18:17:00-05:00

One of Los Angeles’ most significant cultural landmarks, Simon Rodia’s monumental Watts Towers sculpture, finally re-opened last month after a five-year multimillion-dollar restoration effort spearheaded by LACMA.

The project was overseen by the museum’s Senior Conservation Scientist Dr. Frank Preusser, Art Conservator Elisabetta Covizzi, and other staffers whose focus fell mainly on repairing the aging concrete and makeshift armature of the 100-year-old towers in addition to cleaning, stabilizing, and reattaching its many thousands of vulnerable ornamental elements.

Image of Elisabetta Covizzi working on Rodia's sculptural canopy at Watts Towers. Taken May 4, 2022, by Sara Chao. Image via Covizzi's Instagram ©master_conservation.

The complex had been standing largely unaltered since a previous late-90s restoration aimed at seismic upgrades was completed in 2001. A decade later, LACMA began organizing a City Hall-backed effort that identified critical areas of need with help from t...

'Keeping the culture going': Inside the restoration of a heartfelt mural at the Watts Towers in Los Angeles

2021-10-12T15:24:00-04:00

“The mural had fallen into disrepair, its imagery so faded from the sun that some shapes were barely recognizable. On a trip to L.A. in 2017 to restore one of his murals, Davis visited Watts Towers and noted what terrible shape the work was in. It gnawed at him, how fragile the mural was, slowly and quietly deteriorating in plain sight.”

The mural-lined Watts Towers campus is currently at the end of a three-year conservation effort being overseen by LACMA. The largest is artist Alonzo Davis’ tribute to acclaimed visual artist and former Watts Towers Arts Center director John Outterbridge, who died last year. Davis, who founded Leimert Park’s famed Brockman Gallery, executed the painting in 1980 but has since become unable to do the restoration work himself.

In his place, a team of local artists is working to clean the mural in time for next month and very much in the spirit Outterbridge’s vision of intergenerational artist mentorship and community involvement.

“It represents his spirit and sense of community, symbols that reflected my thinking about him,” Davis told the LA Times. “The mural may have faded, but his memory won’t.”

California's 'at-risk' cultural landscapes include Watts Towers

2014-10-29T14:31:00-04:00

Three sites in California — the Watts Towers, Noah Purifoy's Outdoor Desert Museum in Joshua Tree and the "Bay Lights" installation on the Oakland-Bay Bridge — have been named to a list of 11 "at-risk" sites by The Cultural Landscape Foundation in Washington, D.C. [...] "Landscapes often die quiet deaths when you're dealing with the elements," says foundation President Charles Birnbaum.

Can a Frank Gehry design help change the dynamic of Watts?

2014-07-24T13:09:00-04:00

Gehry Partners has signed on to design a campus for the Children's Institute, Inc. (CII), a social services not-for-profit that provides youth development and education programs, as well as other family support and clinical services. For the project, the firm is collaborating with (fer) studio of Inglewood. The new campus will occupy a 2-acre lot on East 102nd Street near its intersection with Compton Avenue. It is just a half-dozen block walk to the northwest of the Watts Towers.

Editor's Picks #310

2013-04-09T12:04:00-04:00

For the latest entry in the ShowCase series Archinect published the Shrine of the Virgin of "La Antigua" by Otxotorena Arquitectos. The project is located in Alberite, La Rioja, Spain and the architects main constraint was the need to "incorporate a preexisting stone archway in the design. This archway was rescued from a previous demolition in the town and it was preserved by the locals".

Donna Sink exclaimed "Wow, wow. I love it. Love the multiple arcade forms and multiple striations and similar but different textures...Would love to see a floorplan if there is one?".

News

The LA Times reported that the Watts Towers in South Los Angeles will be the subject of a new study conducted by experts from UCLA to determine the stability of the historic sculptures.

Orhan Ayyüce shared these words "In my opinion it is the most beautiful and meaningful public art in Los Angeles that people neglected for decades" and a photo.

The Plain Dealer /Cleveland.com announced th...

UCLA engineers will study the stability of Watts Towers

2013-04-01T16:37:00-04:00

The Watts Towers in South Los Angeles will be the subject of a new study conducted by experts from UCLA to determine the stability of the historic sculptures, which were completed by Simon Rodia in 1954. The study, now underway, is expected to be completed by early next year.

RIP Bud Goldstone, the Hero Who Saved Watts Towers

2012-09-24T20:32:00-04:00

Bud Goldstone (1926-2012), a former aerospace engineer who worked for over 50 years to save Watts Towers, has died at the age of 86. In 1959 he devised the test to prove the Towers were structurally sound and stopped the City of Los Angeles from demolishing them. He was a founding member of the Committee for Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts, Inc., which successfully sued the city in 1985 to save the Towers from the city's neglect.

The Watts Towers, Sturdy Survivors

2011-05-24T21:46:03-04:00

"These people have been the stewards of Watts Towers all these years and have a tremendous sense of ownership to them. So while superstars like Walt Disney may be thought of as the consummate 20th-century Los Angeles hero, for those living on 107th Street and nearby, it's Simon Rodia."

One of my favorite cultural landmarks of Los Angeles, Watts Towers, goes on yet another restoration. Still, we need more Angelinos to visit the Towers.

"Now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the city's Department of Cultural Affairs are working on a plan to restore Rodia's sculpture and, in so doing, to get Angelenos more interested in the landmark. Most visitors to the towers are now from outside the city—often from overseas, like their creator himself."