Caltrans wins hands down. Thom Mayne's shrink could not have written a better narative about his secret obsession with brutality.

What is scary is the thought that Gehry will not just have the concert hall to his name, but 4 high rises and a mall which are going to be built across the street as well.

caltrans indeed. no loosey goosey recycled gerhy crap please. moneo is nice but too hum drum for me thank you very much. caltrans is hardcore in relation to that company. i love old school gerhy, but his new stuff is becoming a bit tired.

moneo for me. caltrans looks like a future ruin and i'm hoping gehry will shift into his next phase soon (though i do like the ability to walk on the roofscape path as an urban amenity).

the moneo is both uncompromisingly modern and responsive to church/basilica typology;

it buffers its courtyard from the freeway while also allowing the freeway to inform the design and exhibits a conscious address of that 'front' as well as the one to the urban streets;

it very appropriately achieves separation/sanctuary from the city once you've passed under the portal with the bells - through its physical form/enclosure, the sound buffering of the fountain, the immersion in a consistent warm color/material palette, etc.;

and there is a gravity and solemnity to the interior space that allows for contemplation as well as welcoming celebration. the handling of natural light in relation to artificial light and acceptance of areas of dark shadow all works out brilliantly.

one of my favorite moments is the onyx 'borrowed light' detail behind the altar spaces in the two basement back-to-back chapels.

i need to get to la soon. stephen, your description of moneo's project sounds very nice, and i share your concerns of possible ruin for caltrans. i like the brutality of it though. when i compare moneo's cathedral to his other work, i feel it comes short. this is all speaking without seeing though.

don't you think that the three buildings are all very disconnected from the city, all with huge walls at least on three sides.... that sucks!!!
but even tough I think they are part of the "revival of downtown" but could give a much stronger precedence for a pedestrian friendly city...

I'll cast another vote for the cathedral. In addition to what Steven wrote (which was very well put), there's also something about the materials that I think is very nice, in that it visually embraces the desert environment, and seems to speak to the location through them. I like how the way the concrete is formed makes it rather stone-like, and how that combined with the forms creates sort of a cliff/canyonesque look to it that I don't think would fit in many other areas of the country. It feels very local.
Also interesting is the clear adherance to traditional church typology, while still managing to be very unique formally.

I guess I just feel like Gehry or Mayne would have plopped their buildings down anywhere, while Moneo really paid more attention to where the cathedral was being built.

oh, and to respond to brown666's point: I agree that none of these three buildings are perfectly pedestrian. I think that Disney fails the most at this, because while it addresses the corner condition clearly, the ENTIRE rest of the building fails at this. Caltrans does a similar thing, but with less height to the plinth, so it doesn't seem quite as bad. I would argue though, that the Cathedral should be given some leeway on this, because churches are traditionally places of sanctuary, and to create that sanctuary, peace, and solitude, requires a bit of a thick privacy barrier, though it's actually much more permiable than you expect it to be at first glance.

all three projects will endure time with different reasons and baggage, while, seemingly underdog cathedral, proving to be the most timeless for its religious reasons and for its latin mastery of space and light, that people can relate to. my least favorite thing on the cathedral is dexotex type of large plaza floor. it sure looks like father mahony was running out of money towards the end. but that will probably be redone some day. cathedral is one of the few buildings i know in la that actually acknowledges a freeway.

disney hall will always remain a looker with its billboardish quality. it's a duck. it will have a further self importance, if the new proposals are actually built around it.

cal trans will always be a bit over drastic regarding to its size and will be bitched about the treatment of its back street, which is pretty major, imo. it already has a celebretory billboard/freeway sign on it. i didn't know caltrans would need a building that size. looks like they have assigned a supervisor for every 2 miles of freeway. as a taxpayer, i'd prefer the money was spent on faulty freeway bridges, and decenteralized field operations and smaller pilot headquarters designed by different architects including morphosis.

their close approximety means very little in los angeles layout. there are other important buildings in the area as well, such as city hall, hall of records by neutra, ac martin's water and power building, chandler center, moca, to name a few.

moneo, moneo, moneo, moneo

poop homobrow is doing a school one hill over. Talk about a monster grading project. I think they filled in a canyon somewhere in the valley with all of the fill dirt they took from that site.
At some point the city fathers should start calling it "Archi-Park City".
Thom Mayne is also in the running for the new Federal Court House down the street too. Though he may have lost to Perkins and Will (its all a blur).

But all of the aforementioned projects beat most of the mid-eighties highrise hijinx that pass for sky scrapers in the area (with the exception being the Bonneventure)

i think the moneo's interior is MUCH better than the overall exterior form. It seems somewhat unassuming and docile from the exterior. I've always felt that as a cathedral, it needed to be grand and magnificent from both inside and out. Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, etc. etc. i really like the quality of light in the interior. i think it feels distinctly like southern california in some way.

the Gehry is oh so in vogue and it looks spectacular while approaching on grand ave. it's nice and shiny and i think it'll stand the test of time just as well as the cathedral. however, i feel that the architecture might one day date itself while the catherdral will seem more timeless. the hall itself sounds great, but i don't really like the spaces adjacent to the actual hall itself. they seem somewhat disconnected.

i also think that caltrans is a bit oppressive and large in scale. least favorite of the three. but i'm least familiar with it. something about it turns me off though.

i know that the CRA (community redevelopment agency) has been focusing a lot on this area of the downtown and they've been trying to get good or at least well known architects doing projects there.

pomo- I hate the performing arts school! The thing has NO hierarchy at all. If I were a parent, I'd probably spend fifteen minutes wandering around outside trying to figure out where the freaking principals/administration office is. Too much formal competition makes the whole thing messy.

ew... the bonneventure? forgive me. but i really don't like that building at all.

Rationalist- I haven't seen the renderings yet, just the huge piles of dirt they are pushing around.

A Center for Ants- Try looking at it after a couple of drinks! You'll be shocked at the sinister beauty! But of course it's really about the mini cheeseburgers.

pomo- look here

reminds me of a habitrail i had for my hamster when i was a kid.

Ok, since I started it I will weigh in:

I like the Caltrans building. I don't know how Mayne does it but there is some sort of mathematical approach to the chaos in his buildings that really excites me.

I do like the church though too. It is enormous, isn't it? However, they needed more control joints in the stone.....there are numerous cracks.

And as for that area perhaps contributing to a more pedestrian culture, I think my response to that would be that we actually drove between the three of them because we thought they were too far apart. I think if the streetscapes between them consisted of more housing and some street front retail, restaurants, civic, etc, it might induce people to walk more. Instead they are separated by vast parking lots and some other giant institutional buildings.

They should connect them with a trolley or something. They like trolleys out here.

That is all I have time for now.

WOW THATS UGLY!

Why do they always have to have funky Constructivist-like tower in their projects?

WonderK- control joints or not, this is LA, everything cracks.
Yr. right tho. that section of Downtown is all institutional mega blocks. Maybe if we had more hot dog vendors...

i went to caltrans to file a complain about a pothole. they told me to take the trolley to cathedral and pray, so the pot hole could be fixed soon. while i was praying, i heard kenny g like music coming from the disney concert hall. there you go, i took the trolley again. this time to concert hall, to hear kenny up close. but, there were pot holes on the street causing distracting noises from passing vehicles and i could not hear the concert very well. so, i took the trolley again, back to caltrans to complain. i am in a vicious triangle. what do i do? i really don't like trolleys.

heh, heh.

While ther are some great spatial moments within Moneo's cathedral (not counting the crypt level which is a crass, abysmal place), the facade has got to be the but-ugliest he's ever done (the main one facing the plaza that is-- the other three are far better). I disagree about it being more "timeless" of the three buildings, its more like a bad version of Paul Rudolph-era brutalism, really heavy-handed, clunky and pretty bad compositionaly.

I also disagree that Morphosis's buiding not being site-specific -- the corner plaza/entry is clearly addressing the caddy-corner relationship to city hall. Cal trans has far more sophistication in its exterior compositional strategies (albeit a bit graphic at times).

And I totally diagree that Gehry's building is the most anti-pedestrian -- have you ever walked in, filtering through in various places along Grand Ave? or gone up the exterior stairs, in between the layers of skin? Its amazing -- when was the last time a major public/civic building invited you to climb all over it? The corner is also handled in a very site-specific manner.

In the end they all have their strengths, but Moneo's is clearly the letdown given his intelligence, stature and design ability --it sadly could've and should've been far more finessed/beautiful, especially knowing Moneo's other work.

Something I've discovered that each of these buildings gives an initial impression and through deeper discovery, one finds that there is more beneath the skin. I've been in and around each of these buildings, guided tours of the Caltrans building and the Cathedral, and I worked briefly at the concert hall.

The simple materiality of the Cathedral is beautiful, the coloured concrete and alabaster windows are suited to the cathedral. Earthy materials allowing the structure to be elegant and still timeless. The freeway is clearly addressed and everytime I drive to Hollywood I seem to notice something different. Yes the crypt is terrible, I agree. And not being Catholic I am not fond of the ionography, somehow I find it disrupting, but at the same time it is subdued enough to blend into the overall scheme. And the cracks... this is earthquake country.

The Caltrans building is also full of little discoveries, but the problem being that they are not so obvious. It is a harsh building, with no soft edges. I will say that it is spectacular in the rain. I'm not much impressed with the plaza entry, it seems to fail as ever other plaza attempt in downtown. And some friends of mine had great fun making obscene jestures with those metal bench type protrusions. The inside was less impressive than the outside, especially since there was no money left in the budget to buy new furniture and the employees had to bring their chairs from the old building.

Onto the Concert Hall, which also looks nice in the rain. While I am not exactly in love with the Gehry 'style', the Concert hall does have some wonderful exterior spaces if you go looking for them. It makes me want to get my rock climbing shoes on and find the next greatest climb. My problems is the super shiny bits, that later had to be sandblasted after it was baking the apartments across the street. The building is also a rabbit warren on the inside, a side effect of stuffing the program into the form. Some of the more interesting interior spaces weren't actually designed by Gehry's office. Patina restaurant with it's cnc milled walnut panels is quite remarkable and designed by a different architecture firm.

You can walk from each of these buildings, start in little Tokyo. Go to the Geffen, free on thursdays. Then it's up to the Caltrans building, past City Hall. Here's the tricky bit, up the hill to Grand Ave, check out the Concert Hall and the Moca. Then back down Grand to the Cathedral. If you're feet are tired, at this point you can take the Dash bus back to where you started, it's only 25 cents. It even goes all the way to sci_arc.

Thanks greeneyes. We kind of just showed up and didn't really look into it very much first.

I did really like Patina in Disney Hall. And while inside the cathedral I was most amazed by how quiet it was, despite the size of the space and its adjacency to the highway. I couldn't figure out at first that it was a catholic cathedral, which I was glad for, sometimes Catholics are so uninviting. I would probably attend a service there once, if only to check out the acoustics.

I also enjoyed the random animal garden at the other end of the courtyard. Very peculiar, kind of like candyland. Good pictures though.

i guess you have to be bold or even agressive to compete with all the monumental objects in downtown la,
but did they have to be so military about it?

Disney Concert Hall, and Caltrans Hdqts, are great, but they lack nature. There should be more water incorporated. Cathedral of our lady of angels needs to have more colors, or perhaps a different color all together. I actually don't like it.

The cathedral has a wonderful interior space despite it's severe exterior. In fact, the interior is magnificent, much more so that the interior of Disney Hall. You don't really "get" the exteriorl until you've experienced the interior. It's a very spiritual space that strips away the usual artifice of the european cathedrals. and just leaves you with a grand, solitary yet comforting space. It makes those grand cathedrals of europe seem shallow in comparison. There are no glittery, gold encrusted indulgences for the most part, and it still retains a sense of inspiration and spiritual comfort.

Disney hall, on the other hand, is one of the most optimistic building in the country. Despite what people here think of Gehry, it's his best work. It's an incredibly graceful and beautiful building that is hardly random. Bilbao is random. Disney hall actually makes sense. It's creatively liberated, but it's hardly extreme. When Gehry's buildings show a little restraint, he gets that rare instance where everything just works which is Disney hall.

I haven't seen any of them, but i am very interested in how so many people really like things which look so brutal (in reference to maynes building). i find them to be uncomfortable and unsettling. perhaps its an aquired taste.

how do you think the general public thinks about these buildings? which are more widely used?

all these projects are nothing but ego, ego, and more ego. I've gone through two tours already in the Caltrans building, and that two times too many for me. No thanks. Strip that building from its sexy form, and it's really.... a drab office building better suited for a business park.

The Disney hall.. it looks nice, but i've got nothing to say about it beyond that shallow (un)speculation.

Moneo's building is my favorite out of the three... it's definetely designed with more sensiblities.

However, I wouldn't hail any of these buildings as great pieces of architecture. I just don't feel it. I think I liked my loft more.

The caltrans building is much more successful with it's interior. But the exterior is very harsh. It's the choice of color. He chose a very matte grey. The building should have been a lighter metallic.

WonderK, Gehry didn't do Patina in the concert hall, but I agree that it's the best space in there, or any of the three aforementioned buildings for that matter.

Oops, it was already mentioned. Gotta learn to read. My bad.

We the Department of Standardization, as all architects that we are of great insight molded by our lofty learned patterns, have decreed Gehry the Standardizer of the year 2006. This is the first award given of such stature and Gehry is deservedly the AIA Master Standardizer. Please stand with me as we sing The AIA national standardizer anthem!!! All as one standardizer!!!!!!!

For further reading > LA Forum Issue 2: Gehry and Moneo Under Construction (written before CalTrans started)

Moneo's Cathedral has one of the most amazing interiors I've ever seen. The exterior is harsh, but I like it. Its very thoughfully sited but the 'medievel forecourt space' doesn't work however well intentioned it was. Its interesting to compare it to Schindler's Bethlehem baptist church.

Caltrans I think has major, major flaws. Thom tried extremely hard to be contextual (he's gone on and on about that) but I think it was too much of a challenge to make it happen. The after the fact 'light stip' they put on the plinth is more an acknowedgement of this failure than anything else. They also oriented it according to a park that was supposed to be built across the from the gawdy '100' side, but now its getting built in; a huge miscalculation. Also, the massive cantilever and hanging 'light bar' are just completely gratuitous.

Gehry's Concert hall I think is a beautiful sculpture and the most successfully sited one of the three, but the interiors are a train wreck (except the founders room is frickin' amazing). Two sides of the building are forboding walls, but not as bad a Caltrans and considering the parking requirements and drop in grade its actually very skillfully done. Amazing exterior spaces on the plinth in the back.

Moneo's cathedral was one of the largest archtiectural disappointments I've seen. I was sure it would be magnificent while it was being built, but, alas, it feels like on big monochromatic hunk of stone. The floor looks like the ceilings, even though they are different materails (and outrageously expensive, no doubt).

Spatially, it is anticlimactic. You enter along a path (nice light on the entrance, I'll give it that), but then you just end at a seemingly very small seating area. Courtyard is bare and boring, sound from freeway bounces off cantilever (surely not intended, although kinda cool finding the spots where the sound increases dramatically).

Contextually it fits in because it is so damn boring and looks like it was made out of one material, so it fits in with LA's endless sea of concrete, just with a tan shade.

Sorry, I really was/am disppointed with it. I'll give it 5 out of 10 stars.


Cal Trans was one of the most pleasant surprises. I am a huge Mayne fan, of course, but this building seemed too brutal and monolithic in the picks. Once I was there, though, I immediately loved it. Nice job. This one gets 8 out of 10 stars.


Gehry's is a sculpture, not really better or worse than the others. I love it for being uncompromised, but it also feels so out of place in the middle of LA (Bilbao seemed like a good setting). I prefer the forms here more than Bilbao, but there is no relation to the city or neighborhood (that could be good, I suppose).

That said, I still love the raw talent of Gehry's form.
I'll give this one 8.5 out of 10 stars, just because I love formal architecture and think it's quite beautiful in it's sculptural purity.

I do wish they had made it in the original limestone.

damn I must have been really bored in studio to type all that... Almost a year ago that this thread was started.

I apologize for the bad grammar and odd typo.

the cathedral wins. I'd shoot a movie with monica vitti there

moneo building

mdler loves jesus