Making L.A. More Livable in the ‘90s

Good riddance to the glitz and greed of the 1980s. Hello, the ‘90s and human needs. Maybe.

The temptation for the first column of a new year and a new decade is to proffer a plateful of predictions.

Certainly for architecture and design in the Los Angeles region there are variety of projects in the offing to look forward to, as well as to be concerned about.

These include ambitious mixed-use developments proposed for Playa del Rey, the Pike in Long Beach and at Universal City, and a mixed bag of others for the Fairfax District, Hollywood, Simi Valley and downtown.

Few weeks go by without the heralding of yet another proposal promising a new and better environment for living, working, shopping, playing, etc., etc. Out of this melange one could sketch a vision of Los Angeles in the ‘90s.

However, I prefer not to, bearing in mind the tendency in the real estate industry to describe proposed projects one way, replete with renderings, but have them designed and built quite differently. These experiences lend weight to the journalistic adage of “don’t tell me, show me.”

With this in mind, I thought for the new year instead of predictions, I would offer prescriptions for a more livable Los Angeles, in effect a design manifesto, emphasizing people, places, preservation and planning.

First, it is time for designers to break out of the superficial box of style that dominated the 1980s. There has been enough of two-dimensional buildings by one-dimensional designers playing inarticulate word games with the language of architecture to create structures where you can’t find the front door or, once inside, the stairs, or a place where you can hear what the person sitting in an uncomfortable chair across from you is saying.

We need designs that are socially and aesthetically responsive to those who use and experience them. Simply put, we need a new functionalism that recognizes that buildings serve people.

To do that, a proper emphasize must be placed on the art of architectural programming--the thinking that goes into a building before it is designed--based upon a clearer understanding of the behavioral sciences and environmental analysis.

Among the better examples of this concern is the Delta Airlines terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, designed by Gensler & Associates.

Here the onerous activity of waiting for a plane, or passing through a terminal, is eased considerably by a diverting, efficient design that obviously had people in mind.

Other varied examples of projects that are user-friendly despite constraints of space and economics include the Grand Central Market renovation downtown (Levin & Associates) and the Villa Martinque housing development in Costa Mesa (McLarand, Vasquez & Partners). These could serve well as models for the challenges in the ‘90s of increased diversity and density.

Second, there must be more concern for the places where projects are to be built, generally labeled in the design profession as context. We are not talking here of context as a stylistic device, a backdrop for an architectural object, but as a sensitivity to the surrounding natural environment, a respect for neighbors and an understanding of what makes a particular site special.

For architecture to have meaning, it must have a sense of place, roots need to be sent out to draw nourishment from a community’s cultural history, as difficult as this may be in the Los Angeles region.

Exposed in the process, I hope, will be the shallowness of the intuitive interpretations, quick tricks and hollow pastiches that marked much of design in the ‘80s.

An example of this needed search for place are the design guidelines and specific plan for California 111 in Indian Wells, drafted a few years ago by Johnson Fain & Pereira Associates. The plan takes a raw commercial strip and transforms it into a palm-lined boulevard featuring fragments of the area’s natural beauty, surrounding desert landscape and rich history.

Third, preservation must be pursued more vigorously and with more imagination, not for its own sake, but for what sense of history and identity it offers the region, and how it can focus and aid communities.

We just cannot keep holding out hope for some benefactor or other to restore and maintain our landmarks like breeds of architectural pets.

One proven way is through adaptive reuse or a sympathetic updating. There have been some excellent examples of this recently.

They include converting the Beverly Hills Waterworks into offices and a library for the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences; a Moderne-styled medical building in Boyle Heights into a desperately needed family shelter, and downtown, the Engine Company No. 28 firehouse into an attractive restaurant, and the Meso-American decorated Mayan Theater from an X-rated movie house into an R-rated nightclub.

Finally, the planning process has to be strengthened, with a particular emphasis on block-by-block improvements, coordinated on the community level and guided by a vision.

It is time to begin to mend the fabric of the region, balancing jobs with housing, refurbishing our parks and playgrounds, building new and better schools, protecting the beaches and historic landmarks, providing mass transit and improving traffic, managing growth and generally better shaping and styling our cityscape through a more user and environmentally friendly architecture and design.

However, for the effort to be successful it needs conscientious community involvement, a rededicated civil service, the applied knowledge of an inspired academia, the support of the political and business community and leadership.

Tough, but not impossible, not if people care, beginning with the architecture, planning and design community.