LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 6.0

[Blesha13]

Really wanted the Raiders to come back. Oh well, guess I'll stick with my Dodgers and Lakers

[Mojeda101]

Barry Shy's 15 story slated for South Broadway has just been approved. It's sporting an updated design and some specific numbers. Here's the quote:

APPROVED!!! Today was a giant day at #takacsarchitecture ! Our #955broadway project received city planning approval! If you are at all familiar with the process you know this is no small feat... It was inspiring to hear the board praise our thoughtful approach to a contemporary design that respects historic context. This project will usher in 163 condos, 201 parking stalls, ground floor #retail & a roof top amenity deck. Located at the corner of broadway and Olympic, adjacent to the #westerncostumebuilding #dtla #dtladevelopment #bringingbackbroadway

[IMBY]

Originally Posted by Steve8263

We'll all be dead and buried before any of that lovely plan ever comes to fruition sadly, this is bankrupt L.A. were talking about after all. And the finances are only getting worse with pension liabilities eating up more of the budget every passing day.

Is there a city in this country where this is not happening?

[Steve8263]

Originally Posted by IMBY

Is there a city in this country where this is not happening?

Incredibly enough, you only need to look down the block to the County seat to find a comparatively well run fiscal house. The L.A. County board of Supes has done an admirable job of keeping a lid on their finances over the last few decades.

Sadly that is about to dramatically change now that term limits have shifted seats to very retiree friendly newbies like Hilda and Janice.

[blackcat23]

Originally Posted by DenseCityPlease

Good heavens no. This is precisely the kind of architectural illiteracy and flippant regard for historic preservation that led to the tragic demolition of buildings like the Richfield during the era of Urban Renewal. Late Modern Brutalism may not be your "thing", but City Hall East is an immaculate example of the style and speaks volumes about the history, culture, and context within which it was built. This, and not whether something looks pretty, is the standard against which art and architecture is evaluated.

Just as every architectural style has fallen out of fashion in the decades following it's zenith, each inevitably regains favor at the 50-60 year mark once perspective has set it. Brutalism, like Victorian, Neoclassical, Art Deco, and Mid-Century Modern before it will reach revered status in the 2020s and 2030s, and City Hall East will come to be viewed as an equal (if radically different) landmark to City Hall itself. I pray the city leaders have the wisdom to foresee this before this plan is able to come to fruition...

Oh come on. I personally think it's a poor use of taxpayer money to demolish City Hall East for open space, rather than simply refurbishing it, especially when the master plan also calls for replacement office buildings. But the notion that it could ever be a landmark on par with the 1920s building is laughable.

L.A. City Hall spent a generation as the tallest building in the city, has been featured in countless TV shows, movies, etc. Now its the centerpiece of the New Years Eve celebration.

City Hall East isn't awful, but there's nothing that distinguishes it from the dozens of similar office buildings that line Wilshire Boulevard through K-Town.

[LDVArch]

Originally Posted by ocman

Of course. But the structural commonality (raised museum on individual gallery/communal bases) which was a unique feature of the LACMA design, and much talked about, is no longer unique to LA. It's not going to escape Zumthor's notice, especially as MAD's museum is likely being built first.

The defining feature of the Zumthor building isn't what you think it is. Even when it comes to the shape of the building, for Zumthor the sense of enclosure or act of enclosing is much more important than the geometrical shape of the building.

This is a very complex and contradictory idea. Zumthor is sort of like a philosopher-architect. I won't try to explain the idea. It would take too long. But you see it at work in the way that the LACMA building lifts itself up to create shelter and join the two sides of the museum campus and also in the way that it bends and crosses Wilshire Blvd to create a public square to the west. When you design that way, the shape of the building itself is sort of inconsequential.

[cesar90]

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[JDRCRASH]

Originally Posted by BrandonJXN

The Bunker Hill Towers just completed a renovation so they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

So did the Holiday Inn/Luxe Hotel, yet it's gonna be torn down in a few years as well.

[SLO]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

Galaxy are most definitely more popular in LA than the chargers. They sell out practically every game and have won 5 championships

Not for long

[DenseCityPlease]

Originally Posted by blackcat23

Oh come on. I personally think it's a poor use of taxpayer money to demolish City Hall East for open space, rather than simply refurbishing it, especially when the master plan also calls for replacement office buildings. But the notion that it could ever be a landmark on par with the 1920s building is laughable.

L.A. City Hall spent a generation as the tallest building in the city, has been featured in countless TV shows, movies, etc. Now its the centerpiece of the New Years Eve celebration.

City Hall East isn't awful, but there's nothing that distinguishes it from the dozens of similar office buildings that line Wilshire Boulevard through K-Town.

Perhaps you're not familiar with the sunken plaza beneath City Hall East? Easily one of the most visually arresting public spaces in the whole of Los Angeles:



I'll be the first to admit the drawbacks of modern architecture from an urban planning and livability standpoint, believe me, but take a walk around City Hall East on a quiet, still night and you'll feel as though walking through a cathedral of concrete overgrown with plant life. It's awe-inspiring and monumental in an alien sort of way that shocks your preconceived notions about what is and isn't beautiful.

Buildings like City Hall and Union Station are "easy" to like...they are comforting and familiar in their aesthetic and pull you in with a warm nostalgia. It is for the buildings like City Hall East, DWP, and the Bonaventure that historic preservation now exists. For the buildings that are "challenging" and slow to reveal their charm, important not for their outward beauty but for their inward embodiment of creativity and human daring.

Sorry to get all highfalutin about this, I just really love architecture and felt the need to stand up for an ugly duckling.

[CaliNative]

A rare week when L.A. takes candy from both San Francisco (Lucas Museum) & San Diego (Chargers). Unfortunately, more grist for the LaLa bashers I suppose.

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by DenseCityPlease

Perhaps you're not familiar with the sunken plaza beneath City Hall East? Easily one of the most visually arresting public spaces in the whole of Los Angeles:



I'll be the first to admit the drawbacks of modern architecture from an urban planning and livability standpoint, believe me, but take a walk around City Hall East on a quiet, still night and you'll feel as though walking through a cathedral of concrete overgrown with plant life. It's awe-inspiring and monumental in an alien sort of way that shocks your preconceived notions about what is and isn't beautiful.

Buildings like City Hall and Union Station are "easy" to like...they are comforting and familiar in their aesthetic and pull you in with a warm nostalgia. It is for the buildings like City Hall East, DWP, and the Bonaventure that historic preservation now exists. For the buildings that are "challenging" and slow to reveal their charm, important not for their outward beauty but for their inward embodiment of creativity and human daring.

Sorry to get all highfalutin about this, I just really love architecture and felt the need to stand up for an ugly duckling.

I doubt that City Hall east will be torn down. The taxpayers who paid for it would be outraged, and although boxy, it's not the worst looking building in L.A. Besides, an open plaza would soon be filled with homeless tents. Leave it there--beautify it as much as possible.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by blackcat23

I personally think it's a poor use of taxpayer money to demolish City Hall East for open space, rather than simply refurbishing it, especially when the master plan also calls for replacement office buildings.

the idea of tearing it down is so silly I wonder if the planners of the diagram were just trying to kill time....& justify the amt of whatever contract fee they're receiving. It's one of those pie in the sky ideas that floats around every so often. The notion of creating a new bldg for LA govt is even more extravagant since there remains a surplus of unused office space in dt.

IT IS welcome news that George Lucas and his team have finally settled upon a museum home for the Star Wars creator’s collection, after a years-long saga among three cities. Because the $1 billion Lucas Museum for Narrative Art has a vital mission to achieve.

The Lucas Museum, newly set to break ground and rise at Los Angeles’s Exposition Park near the Memorial Coliseum, deserves our embrace partly because it can help erase some of these artificial high/low lines in the name of great narrative art.

And Lucas is the perfect wealthy Jedi to help cut across these boundaries. His Star Wars, of course, pulled from so many midcentury pop sources, from Alex Raymond’s beautiful Flash Gordon comic strips and their adapted screen serials to Jack Kirby comic books to the genius frames of Akira Kurosawa — topped by the essential otherworldly illustrations of Ralph McQuarrie, whose very visions first helped sell Star Wars to studio heads.

Also in the collection is the art from the “Genesis” graphic novel by Robert Crumb — one of the few modern cartoonists whose work has been fully embraced by the fine-art world.

A few years ago, I asked Crumb why he had been welcomed past the red ropes of fine-art acceptance where so many of his peers had not. His response: He laughed. It was the smile of a storytelling icon who knows it is up to the arbiters of the arbitrary.

One relevant example of this high/low dichotomy, for me, came at the turn of the 21st century, when the San Diego Museum of Art imported the Smithsonian’s traveling show “Star Wars: The Power of Myth.” In the wake of the decisions to mount that exhibition and other pop blockbuster shows, such as the Muppets and Dr. Seuss, talented new director Don Bacigalupi was brought in partly to restore the museum’s role in the community and its reputation at large.

Which gives me a great new hope, because the same eye that can illuminate American Impressionism or the Spanish Renaissance surely can appreciate the degree to which sublime visual storytelling renders a work as profound art, whether it comes from a canvas, a Bristol board comic strip or the cinematic models on a silver screen.

So we are likely to get a museum (scheduled to open in several years) that, in its acceptance of many types of narrative art, is as beautifully fluid as its very own long physical design.

too bad the devlpr of new apt bldgs located in historically marginal sections of dt....yet quite visible due to their proximity to fwys.....insists on duplicating the exact same design for all his projs. I'm also amazed at how close his newest completed one is to the fwy. I drove by it not too long ago & wondered how its tenants handle all the noise & grime from auto exhaust.


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....but such projs do fill in the gaps & make dt feel less lonely & inhospitable, esp at night. Seeing windows lit up in that apt bldg is a big contrast to when portions of dt like that were nothing but parking lots & totally vacant at night.

[ozone]

Originally Posted by CaliNative

A rare week when L.A. takes candy from both San Francisco (Lucas Museum) & San Diego (Chargers). Unfortunately, more grist for the LaLa bashers I suppose.

You might be overestimating how much people care about either. Obviously, more San Diegans would care since something is actually being taken away. On the other hand, I imagine the majority of San Franciscans could not care less.

too bad the devlpr of new apt bldgs located in historically marginal sections of dt....yet quite visible due to their proximity to fwys.....insists on duplicating the exact same design for all his projs. I'm also amazed at how close his newest completed one is to the fwy. I drove by it not too long ago & wondered how its tenants handle all the noise & grime from auto exhaust.

citywatch these places might not win many accolades from the design community but they do a good job of providing (relatively) affordable housing and increasing density. If you think this is bad you should travel around Asia for awhile.

[Eightball]

Yeah I was gonna say people have been living right next to freeways in NYC forever and the units stay rented. We need all the housing we can get...

[ChargerCarl]

I kind of like Palmer's tacky aesthetic. In a way it's very LA.

[bobcat]

Originally Posted by ozone

You might be overestimating how much people care about either. Obviously, more San Diegans would care since something is actually being taken away. On the other hand, I imagine the majority of San Franciscans could not care less.

I got that impression, too. I don't even remember Lucas receiving much support from the SF arts community, whereas in Los Angeles he had advocates in Eli Broad and Michael Govan, among others. I know if I were on the Lucas Museum board I would want to be located in a city where we had the respect and support of important cultural leaders like Broad and Govan.

[bobcat]

Originally Posted by Eightball

Yeah I was gonna say people have been living right next to freeways in NYC forever and the units stay rented. We need all the housing we can get...

And in Chicago lots of apartments are right next to the the elevated trains.

[King Kill 'em]

Originally Posted by bobcat

And in Chicago lots of apartments are right next to the the elevated trains.

As there should be. We need to start embracing Els more again in this country. They're cheaper to build than subways and more efficient than surface light rail.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by King Kill 'em

As there should be. We need to start embracing Els more again in this country. They're cheaper to build than subways and more efficient than surface light rail.

But muh light and air! Who would possibly want to walk down a shaded street in LA?