Downtown L.A. Tour (Part Two)

11/1/2008

Heading south from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (see part one) on Grand Avenue, I passed the three buildings of the Music Center, designed by Welton Becket (one of the namesakes of international firm Ellerbe Becket and proponent of "total design") and completed in 1964 and 1967.  My guidebook calls it "bland," but it actually looked kind of interesting, though the object of my immediate desire was just across 1st Street to the south.

Yup, the Disney Concert Hall. 

I was keen on seeing this 2003 Frank Gehry building not because I love the man's designs, but because I'm actually not sure about him yet.  The Disney is tourist-friendly, with open doors and free audio tours (narrated by John Lithgow).  Though the tours won't let you in the main auditoruim, you're free to wander the rest of the building and the 3rd floor garden. 

3rd floor garden?  I was surprised, too.  But it was actually my favorite thing about the entire building.

Firstly, though, the pros and cons of the concert hall.  Cons: damn, the entry plaza is scorching hot from that warm California sun and all that steel.  The interiors are staid and unremarkable -- the wooden structural trees are almost interesting but look more mall than concert hall.  And I can't get used to the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't game Gehry plays with the structural elements -- all covered up and shiny from the outside and then exposed overhead in the warm wood auxiliary performance space (the audio tour all but admits it's like looking up the building's skirt).

Pros: The aerial skywalk on the 5th floor is fantastic: great views, cool spaces, unabashedly technological.  The seemingly impenetrable steel shell stragetically hides a large number of windows, making the interior well-lit and open while preserving the sculptural look of the exterior -- Bravo!  And that little-known garden is simple, intimate, and classy.  It also lends a certain softness to the building that it desperately needs.

Designed by Melinda Taylor (landscape designer) and Lawrence Reed Moline (landscape architect) the garden is home to lush planting beds, large trees (which were craned into place from three stories below), a Delft china-covered sculpture by Gehry, and a 300-seat outdoor amphitheater.  Its a great place to sit and relax.  While I was there, several Angelenos were taking lunch in the cool shade.

There are also some excellent moments where building skin is glimpsed through vegetation.

It actually made me wish the street level plazas felt a little more like this.

Just another block south is the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), part of the massive, multi-level "California Plaza" development.  MOCA actually has three venues across town, but this is the main building, designed in 1986 by Arata Isozaki.

The exterior is a jumble of materials (red stone, white metal, steel gridwork, glass block, and green metal with red diamond-pattern inlays) and the interior is a confusing maze of half-levels.  The pyramid roofs in the larger galleries, though, do make those spaces appropriately lofty.  I was interested in seeing the Louise Bourgois exhibition on at the time, otherwise, I might have skipped this one.

California Plaza, by the way, is perhaps worth a closer look.  It is perched at the top of Bunker Hill and includes two office towers and an elaborate (perhaps over-wrought) water plaza and performance stage.  I got almost totally lost amongst the many levels, but the design itself seemed interesting.

Very urban.  I hear it clears out by 5, though.  (I couldn't discover who the landscape architect is.)

The last stop before hitting the Red Line back towards my hotel: the Bunker Hill Steps, designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.  Supposedly inspired by the Spanish Steps in Rome, Halprin's work includes a series of curvilinear rises bisected by a rocky water feature. 

There's also an escalator to one side, which drops theme-park-esque through a series of Old World archways.  Though this certainly isn't Halprin's best work, riding an outdoor escalator downward about 6 stories is an interesting experience.  You can see some video of my descent here.

As I mentioned earlier, I traipsed around just a small part of downtown LA.  But I happened upon a nice little on-line guide called Angels Walk, which you might find interesting if you had more time (and energy) than I did.  After these sights and the long ride back to West Hollywood, I was pooped.  And so was my little design-tour sidekick.

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