Downtown LA
It could be said that every district in Los Angeles has its own downtown. It’s somehow like little examples of the american urbanism: the financial district full of skyscrapers, surrounded by the low-rise suburbs, connected by big highways. The city of Los Angeles also has its main downtown, the Downtown LA, famous for being the scenery of many action movies and detective series. Like most of the US cities, most of the Downtown LA skyscrapers are part of the International Style movement, with the main characteristic of being boxy buildings without any major details in their facades (with some exceptions like the Sears Tower in Chicago). The US Bank Tower, who breaks this monotony, was one of the tallest buildings in the United States. Today, the Wildshire Grand is being constructed and its gonna be one of the tallest in the West Coast, with almost 330 m. and a design who fits more into this particular era of modern skyscrapers. There’s plenty of old buildings with brick facades, like in New York but somehow different. Same with the Art Deco architecture. While the Art Deco skyscrapers of New York are substantially darker (and taller), the West Coast Art Deco is more colorful. On the other side of the architecture of the amazing city are the International Style skyscrapers, who are so close from each other that some of the streets don’t even have sunlight at day, with big avenues crossing each other, pedestrian bridges, and tunnels, from this point of view very similar to the urbanism of Hong Kong.
