To slighty change the question: who is the most influential (living) architect in LA?

1> In the realm of the visual and iconographic: Frank Gehry, for obvious reasons. Even if it is nothing more than the coordinated hubris of the cultural elite, Disney Hall has become one of the visual icons of LA. As much as you might admire Thom Mayne and/or dislike Gehry's aesthetic language, I think Gehry's standing as LA's uber-architect is pretty solid.

2> In the realm of the city's infrastructure: Doug Suisman, as I explained here.

3> In the realm of education: Ray Kappe, for starting SCIArc (and indirectly generating half the discussions on archinect).

In terms of who is "best" - at engaging "architectural" issues: construction, aesthetics, materials, spatial sequences, etc - Daly,Genik would be pretty high on my list, because I think they do beautiful work that engages prototypical LA buildings/situtations (strip malls, lowrise warehouses) and construction systems in interesting, provocative ways. Their Camino Nuevo Academy and the Art Center Windtunnel are two of the most engaging and optimistic projects built here in the past few years. KoningEizenberg is also a favorite of mine, since few other architects have managed to make architecture out of the construction materials/language of LA's lowest common denominator buildings (stucco dingbats with cheap metal windows and minimum decoration).

So now Im sure somebody will next accuse me of playing favoritism with friends (which is partially true - you do appreciate people's work more when you understand what they are trying accomplish, what their constraints are, and don't evaluate it from the purely visual). Oh well, be that as it may; there is a lot of work in this city that I admire and like, and it certainly is not limited to the five architectural practices Ive mentioned.

morphosis. they have the design smarts and the technical smarts.

Morphosis is running shit right now, Moss in a few years. If he got that Theater in St.Petersburg built all LA architects would have to bow down to him.

i think the thriller meant that morphosis is on top, in charge, the head honcho, running the show, taking the cake, leading the flock, being tony danza, etc etc etc....

j, your a real dumb ass, Thanks for explaining Doug, big ups

P.S. ROTO is very low on my list

1. Gehry - he's given a 'name' to contemporary architecture
2. Mayne (and Morphosis) - he has taught for something like 27 years (yup, I was one of them), so he influences many, and they are building large projects, and several of them

Moss?? I think I am getting a headache...

If Moss could have bamboozled the Russians into building those sagging potato sacks I'm not sure if it would have qualified him for LA's greatest architect, but certainly would have put him in the running for LA's greatest salesman! Which is nothign to sneeze at...

guys
do you seriously think the Caltrans building can pass for being a 'good' piece of architecture to laymen and people who dont understand the meaning of those stupid huge screens and twisted volumes??
did anyone see the stupid structure they are making near the frank gehry aviation museum near LA???

although i have to say that i like their Olympic village proposal, lets wait till it gets built...

gehry is much more revolutionary than morphosis and for christsakes, mayne is one of the worst confused talkers ever

and thanks Alan for not putting morposis' name on your list

and I hope you did not mean to

thanks

Not in LA but I have to say, FOG lacks an sort of integrity whatsoever and quite frankly am quite bored with seeing the same building time and time again. It was about evolution for him until he capped it with Bilboa. Since then he has done nothing but whore himself out. Moss is a clown and I agree with the comment about Mayne being an awful speaker. However, Morphosis is doing quite a bit of work right now AND seems to be carrying a great deal of weight for the west coast (recently been to one of the latest construction sites and it is incredible and the winning of the Village) whereas, FOG just kind of gets laughed at. All of this is of course merely my opinion - grain of salt if you will.

On a side note - I know there are a good number of arch. firms in southern cal that are doing very good things at very different scales so I would like to hear more about them from those that live/work/study in the region.

The Caltrans building is one of the meaner and nastier structures to go up in LA recently. Three-and-half of the four street facades are a windowless, doorless, 12' high concrete wall. This includes the facades directly fronting the front door of the New Otani Hotel, Little Tokyo and the historic St Vibiana's Cathedral. The rest of the building is clad in black glass and black panels, then wrapped in perforated sheet metal. The result is one of the most homogenous, featureless and flat looking buildings to go up in years. It seems to be repeating all of the worst characteristics of bad 70s corporate architecture.

Ill post some photos this evening to the image gallery.

Caltrans:
Building components- highly detailed, maybe something.
Urban design- ARE exam site planning level.
Political reading-dictatorial, state power.

good call Alan - thanks again

it just seems that translating Form Z into architecture is somehow now working that well. But what i wonder is, when will they realize this? though ive heard that the Caltrans building has a lot of eco-friendly features, it easily passes as one horrible building. Has anyone seen the back side ???

i'd prefer 'regular' office buildings to it anyday

The CalTrans building supposedly has all sorts of "green" features. Im not sure if that redeems the building in any way - lots of buildings these days have green features, and getting LEED certification has basically become a requirement for government work.

The building is a major disappointment, actually. Morphosis' competition boards for the project were very compelling, and their Diamond Bar High School is on the other end of the "worst-best of LA" bell curve.

BTW - the Women's Enviornmental Council will be sponsoring a tour of the CalTrans building and these features June 12 - check the LA Forum website calendar after Tuesday for all the details.

i'd be curious to see what that section of downtown will be like once the building is finished.
as a layperson, i admire the caltrans building so far because it provides a striking visual anchor for the transitional section of downtown, from the end of the financial district/broadway to little tokyo. the building has a very strong presence, and i've walked there on more occaisions than usual since it started taking shape (considering this is LA and nobody walks in LA).
as for the complaints based on its aesthetics, i believe there are far 'uglier' and more homogenous flat faced (what's so wrong with flat-faced anyway?) buildings in los angeles. i'm just grateful for whatever slightly structurally interesting buildings we can get in this city.
as for its exterior reading of dictatorial, state bureaucracy: it's not a library, city hall, or any particularly directly participatory space. it's a building for caltrans. like my friend says, we can pretend all we like, but in the end it's not a democracy; it's a republic. unfortunately.

Caltrans:
From the photos it looks like a fragment of the death star, which wasn't a great design to start with... had a weakness, some kind of exhaust, vulnerable to attack.
Building something with those association for real, without ticket offices and people in huge suits offering photo ops is just ridiculous. Alluding to some loose fantasy rather than a positive vision for the future or the now is pathetic kids stuff.
Any form can make sense if the passion of the designer is matched by the rigour of the idea, it will show through.

i can't believe that people are even considering morphosis- their current work is big, but horrible. how many wrapping screens and "layers" can one take- and this passes itself off as great architecture? it might be great hustling... i feel like this is the emperor's new clothes- morphosis is naked! if a lot of big work is the criteria, then shouldn't we be considering nbbj or hok? similar amount of creativity, talent and innovation... this guy has really pulled the wool over a lot of people's eyes.

Have you been to Diamond Ranch and walked around the spaces?

My criteria was simply based on the most influential architect alive in LA today. That simply is Thom Mayne and Frank Gehry.

If we are talking about dead guys, I still love FLW, Frank Israel, and Schindler.

Caltrans, Morphosis (photos by Alan Loomis)
more images in gallery

Dead guys? I'm diggin Lautner. And he's not that dead.

This thing seems to be a hybird between the DeathStar and the Detroit Renassiance Center.

I don't even want to try to imagine what the Detroit Renaissance Center looks like.

I think it is more like the Borg Cube from Star Trek: "Resistance is futile - you will be assimilated." Anyways, I discovered the official project website, with lots of progress photos and a webcam.

mayne.

calTrans will probably be a great building. I think we should all reserve judgement until it's completed, but especially in this case since the plaza covering will be an incredible addition. the metal-screen construction could prove to be incredibly smart for LA, it could also be incredibly inefficent. the light well and the double-stop elevators could open up the office spaces nicely, but could also be insignficant in the sea of cubicles. someone wrote "have you seen the backside?", I would ask which side is the backside. I drive west along temple every morning and it works incredibly well in context and is very, very beautiful. the north glass facade opens up nicely and the south facade's solar panels are interesting, at most, and superior to just about every other facade downtown at best.

the interior doesn't work as well, but I would submit that for the budget, and for the incredibly large amount of program, the building is a massive success. I'm not as impressed by buildings with unlimited budgets (disney concert hall). I just can't wait to see the san fransisco version.

moss? genik? that's a little bit of a stretch... I'm surprised no one's mentioned Lynn yet.

Why does the picture with the "Borg Building" have the name Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger? Is it the an effigy to Schwarzenegger?

I think answering which side of CalTrans is the backside is pretty obvious. There is a plaza (and entry) facing 1st Street and Main Street. All the other facades at street level are windowless, doorless concrete walls - ergo everything other than 1st/Main corner is the backside. At street level, the CalTrans building is less porous than the Bonaventura Hotel.

Incidentally, one of the columns in the plaza is inscribed with text - which was partially covered by blue styrofoam when I was there Sunday, but judging from the partial letters I could make out, it would appear the CalTrans building is going to be named after Eli Broad, our very own neo-Huntington character.

Sound like the Ren Cen in Detroit at street level

did someone actually suggest lynn as a great architect in LA? what planet are you on. great theorist, yes. great architect, iffy at best...have you actually seen anything he's done....shudder.

I didn't suggest that lynn was a great architect, I was only surprised no one mentioned him yet. especially since alan turned this thread towards the most "influental" architect, you could make a strong case for lynn in his influence over architectural designs and how architecture and architects relate to the general public. so I would suggest that I am on a planet that not only reads the posts I criticize, but also the subject matter of the thread.

alan, you seem like a fairly smart, fairly intelligent guy. so it seems odd that you would write that it is obvious that three sides of the building are the backside. obviously here, there is some sort of ambiguity to which one is the back, since you are saying they all are- which they can't be. as far as your criticism of the porosity of the building at street level, this seems somewhat misplaced, since 1) the building is a state building and porosity could actually programmatically hinder the building 2) most of the facades at street level are covering parking, so there really isn't a need there for porosity 3) the facades of the lower block that are covering office space do have windows, which are covered by screens that blend into the rest of the facade and 4) the juxtaposition of a seemingly non-porous surfaces and extremely porous surfaces is fairly interesting.

again, I would suggest that caltrans is a remarkable structure, especially when the budget and the time allowed for completion are taken into consideration.

I think Alan's comments about "porosity" were directed towards the buildings unsympathetic relationship to those few sorry individuals who have to inhabit the streets of that part of downtown. If this project is to act (as some have suggested) towards reinvogorating that paarea, it is unlikely to do so when what it presents at street level is a few thousand feet of blank facade. Whether driven by program or not, it still seems urbanistically irresponsible. Couldn't retail or spec office space have been placed at the ground level building perimeter?

And the RenCen analogy seems apt - but don't forget that that building has one sweet atrium.

again i criticized your post as far as concerning great or influential architects. i don't think lynn's architecture is as important as his theoretical approach to architecture. but then again is often difficult to separate the influence of theory from that of built architecture. i'm actually surprised no one has mentioned neutra (although dead) for his influence on los angeles architecture. as far as living architect, would it be heresay to suggest in some ways that rotondi has opitimized the DIY nature of los angeles architecture and denari has captured a conceptual trajectory of architecture that is inherently los angeles in its predilection towards the graphic, the infrastructural, the slick, and the abstract.

I agree that from an URBAN standpoint caltrans could benefit from some retail at the street (particularly given therir supposed goals), however I'm not sure that the architect is entirely to blame for that (if at all). If a client gives you a program, a site, and minimal budget and you want to increase the program not too many clients are going to be very sympathetic to that. I don't know what Los Angeles codes are like or the design review process, but I know that in portland there are certian public "corridors" which require a certian ammount of retail and office space on the first few floors.

the original design had a walkway through the plaza and out the southeast side- but the state cut it for security reasons. so I would guess that other porous moves would have been shot down to.

I think that with what mayne had to work with, he did an incredible job. caltrans will eclipse the disney concert hall.

You just don't allow parking space to ruin a buildings interface with the city. If security is an issue you can atleast make it appear to be "porous" communicate a bit. If the threat is of the magnitude of Rebel X-Wings though you may want to plug every hole.