Local Architect to Help Shape Downtown LA

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

April 26 -- One Santa Monica resident may be responsible for the redesign that will shape how life in Downtown Los Angeles will be lived for decades to come.

As officials grapple with how to transform 50 square blocks of homeless squalor on the hardened streets of Downtown Los Angeles, renowned architect and Santa Monica resident Frank Gehry will turn his gaze upward with his first two skyscrapers.

As part of a $1.8 billion, 10-square-block Grand Avenue revitalization plan for Downtown Los Angeles, the architect of LA’s Disney Concert Hall and Spain’s Guggenheim Museum will oversee his latest imprint on the Los Angeles landscape.

"I hope that people will wander through it," Gehry said. "It's a spread-out downtown. It's an L.A. downtown, it's not a New York downtown."

"It's thrilling for me to be doing it," he said.

Like everything else he’s done -- including the façade of corrugated sheet metal and chain link fences enmeshed in the exterior of his own Santa Monica home north of Wilshire Boulevard -- it will be distinctly Gehry.

Two L-shaped towers 24 to 50 stories tall, encased in glass and surrounded by highway loops, will include 350 condominiums, a 275-room hotel spa and health club and three rooftop pools.

When the sun goes down, developers hope the Grand Avenue revitalization – which includes what would be the world’s largest condominium buildings – will draw a crowds to the new restaurants and clubs.

As it stands now, the core of Los Angeles at night is inhabited by an estimated 10,000 homeless whose ramshackle cardboard dwellings litter Skid Row, a 50 square block swath of urban squalor.

The winner of the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor, Gehry has won international renown, but always he kept coming home to Los Angeles, where he launched his career with Victor Gruen Associates.

His contributions to Santa Monica and the surrounding areas include Santa Monica Place, the 25-year-old indoor mall Downtown, which has been slated for redevelopment, and the Chiat/Day Office on Main Street in Venice near the Santa Monica border. The building is graced by 45-foot tall-black binoculars designed by artist Claes Oldenburg.

Gehry’s style reflects a distinct Southern Californian flair, which can be traced back to the funky-coastal communities of Venice and Santa Monica he haunts. In his Pritzker acceptance speech in 1989, Gehry compared designing structures to creating sculptures or painting a picture.

“Architecture is surely an art, and those who practice the art of architecture are surely architects,” he said.

Function, as well as form, is important to Gehry, who noted that those who undertake architecture have a social responsibility.

“Architecture must solve complex problems,” he said. “We must understand and use technology, we must create buildings which are safe and dry, respectful of context and neighbors, and face all the myriad of issues of social responsibility, and even please the client.”

His new towers – which include 100 affordable housing units – will put that notion of social responsibility to the test. Gehry is quoted as saying the project will bring a mix of different age, economic and ethnic groups to Los Angeles’ Downtown.

Gehry’s design is one of two large developments unveiled Monday to revitalize the area.

An unrelated proposal was announced for the world’s largest condominiums, yet another sign that developers are rushing to invest in the City’s center.

The $500 million dollar project would include a 60-story building, called the City House, with 180 luxury condos and a 50-story high-rise with 150 high-priced units.

Nearly 20,000 new residents are projected to move Downtown in the next 10 years, according to press reports.