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The buildings were constructed and built by the Chandler Family. The different sections of the block have different cornerstones set by succeeding generations. – at Los Angeles Times — Twitter
With the news that Patrick Soon-Shiong is moving the LAT’s newsroom from its historic HQ, to El Segundo, Ben Welsh Editor @LATdatadesk took readers on a wander through the interlocking buildings, at 1st and Spring. https://twitter.com/palewire/status... View full entry
Gehry has completed new — and nearly final — designs for the Grand, an open-air complex of apartments, condominiums, movie theaters, restaurants and shops that promises to enliven a city block that has been mostly dead for half a century. [...]
The delay helped improve the project, Himmel insisted. Five years ago, there was a "disconnect" between what Gehry wanted to build and what Related could pay for [...] Since then, Gehry has found ways to reconcile his vision with costs
— Los Angeles Times
Image: Gehry Partners/Related Cos.But wait, there's more: the LA Times writes that developing the block on Grand Avenue would finally unlock a design feature Gehry himself "baked into his design for Disney Hall" a long time ago — the ability of the concert hall's curvy metallic facade to receive... View full entry
The Bonaventure has become a focal point for the debate on Postmodernism, ever since its discovery as a Postmodern hyperspace by [cultural theorist] Fredric Jameson some years ago…It’s a landscape that’s highly fragmented. It’s a space that de-centers you, makes you feel lost. And in this feeling of being lost and dislocated, you feel that your only recourse is to submit to authority. You’re helpless, you’re made helpless, you’re peripheralized, you’re lost in these spaces. — Ed Soja, eastofborneo.org
In light of John Portman's passing, here is a 6 minute clip with urban theorist Ed Soja discussing the postmodern nature of the infamous architect's Bonaventure Hotel located in downtown Los Angeles. h/t to Orhan from this thread. View full entry
During LA CoMotion — a downtown event featuring the so-called city of tomorrow — a Los Angeles artist group is reframing what the city of tomorrow is by bringing the art to the screens and streets. A local group of Los Angeles video artists is making strides — and having fun while doing it... View full entry
The unexpected closure of Angels Flight on Monday, four days after the funicular’s grand reopening, seemed a fitting twist for a railway that has operated in fits and starts for half a century. Since its reopening, 21 years ago, Angels Flight has been shut down more than half the time. — Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles's well known car culture quite efficiently dismantled the city's public transportation, passenger railway system, and the now long-gone network of red cars. Yet, one passenger train, and the smallest of all, keeps rising from the ashes — and dying again. Angels Flight, the... View full entry
Longtime DTLA developer and landowner Joseph Hellen has released a revised design for a proposed 40-story, 420-foot tall apartment tower at 525 South Spring Street. — Urbanize.LA
What would downtown Los Angeles' historic core look like with a 40-story apartment building with a wavy white exterior? Probably a great deal like the rendering above, which was created by TSK Architects working with Steinberg Architects (who are carrying through to produce the design in an... View full entry
Ever wondered when the high-rises in downtown Los Angeles were built? This two-minute video of animated renderings by Commercial Cafe provides a brief history and date for most of the skyscrapers downtown, from City Hall to the Wilshire Grand, concluding with a color-coded erection sequence by... View full entry
As L.A. pats itself on the back for its freshly angular skyline, a new architectural trend — enabled by another city ordinance — threatens to turn the beating heart of modern Los Angeles into a cold, lifeless and unwalkable place. — The Los Angeles Times
This excellent piece by the aptly named Steven Sharp delves into the uglification of downtown Los Angeles via the "parking podium," wherein large buildings dedicate their first few floors to a parking garage to meet code requirements for parking, thereby plunging the pedestrian realm back into an... View full entry
Two 58-story towers, eighteen years and two billion dollars make up the fundamental elements of Herzog & de Meuron's city-like mixed-used development "6 AM," which, while beginning its first phase of construction in 2018 in downtown L.A.'s Arts District, won't be finished until its principal... View full entry
The LA-based developer City Century has filed a project application with the city planning department for a major new building complex design by SOM and P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S. Located at the intersection of Olympic and the 110, right across from the Staples Center and LA Live, the project would comprise... View full entry
Fifty-two stories, four visually distinct sections, and one playful, gaping hole constitute the major components of Gensler's proposed new 300+ unit residential building for downtown Los Angeles, which would rise from the ashes of a (soon-to-be) former auto dealership on 1600 South Figueroa... View full entry
Earlier this year, the Sixth Street Bridge, which spans the Los Angeles River and connects the Arts District to Boyle Heights, was demolished due to a structural issue known as “concrete rot”. Built in 1932, the bridge held an iconic status in the collective imagination of the city... View full entry
Take away the conceptual heft of Chris Burden's Metropolis II and substitute in a grade-school love for pre-fabricated plastic building blocks and you'd have something like Jorge Parra Jr.'s eight-years-in-the-making Lego model of Los Angeles, which portrays a detailed swath of the city's... View full entry
The sail and the spire challenged the best intentions of city planners, the fire department and the architectural community, who believed that a 1974 building code requiring helicopter landing pads on all buildings higher than 75 feet should be inviolable. [...]
A.C. Martin Partners, however, argued that the Wilshire Grand should change the status quo, and they took their inspiration in part from the ziggurat-inspired crown of City Hall, which their firm had designed in the 1920s.
— latimes.com
For more on L.A.'s changing downtown:Museum at the front line: One-to-One #33 with Dora Epstein Jones, executive director of the A+D MuseumDowntown LA has a new museum on the horizonWilshire Grand Tower, the West Coast's tallest building, structurally tops out in LA"Bouncy-house urbanism is on the... View full entry
Dora Epstein Jones is the newly minted executive director of the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles. With a doctorate in Architectural History, Theory and Criticism from UCLA, Epstein Jones came to A+D after nearly 15 years at SCI-Arc, where she led the coordination of humanities... View full entry
