Architectural Misogyny: A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture in Southern California at MOCA

Advertised as 'one of the most important architectural exhibit among the many curated under the Pacific Standard Time umbrella,' A New Sculpturalism is fraught with scandals. I have to admit: I haven't been and I don't intend to go.

The backstory goes like this. The original curator of A New Sculturalism exhibit, Christopher Mount was fired because architectural superstar Frank Gehry disagreed with him, an act which threatened the whole existence of the show. However, upon Gehry's recommendation, Mount was replaced by Thom Mayne who took over the curation and the exhibit design. When the exhibit finally opened with two-month delay it featured a new exhibit design by Thom Mayne's Morphosis. The exhibit highlights physical models of 30 well-promoted Los Angeles practices, with a ribbon weaving over the models. Videos featuring Interviews with architects are projected onto the ribbon.

The show, much like anything happening at MOCA in the last few years, is not even worth criticizing. A month after A New Sculpturalism opened, MOCA's controversial director Jeffrey Deitch resigned to a great joy of Los Angeles art community.

However, the serendipitous consequence of this messy process and Mayne's ribbon is more revealing of the internal problems in Los Angeles architectural practices than of MOCA's political operation. The ribbon closely resembles the ribbon used in the quintessential exhibits called Non-Standard Architecture held at Pompidou a decade ago. The ribbon at Pompidou was used to a great aim, it's linear nature and implied movement showed historical development of computational design to situate the contemporary practices and educate the audience. Instead of history, Mayne's ribbon projects interviews with architects onto the ribbon. But the continuous movement of the ribbon, and body's tendency to move along the ribbon rather than listen to the interviews, unveils an interesting reality about Los Angeles architecture. Most of those interviewed are white males. 

For a city that lives in diversity, it is surprising to see so many white male architects promoted in this exhibit that claims to span the contemporary architecture of Southern California. As verbalized recently by Zaha Hadid in an interview and evident in the resistance to acknowledge Denise Scott-Brown as an equal Pricker Prize winner, the reality of architectural profession is that architecture is unfortunately still dominated by males. MOCA's exhibit has shown only that the contemporary architecture in Los Angeles is not that contemporary.

Architecture from the Inside Out:
Los Angeles Modernism and the exhibit on Quincy Jones, the architect

 

Quincy Jones is not one of the famous Los Angeles Modernists. Many around Los Angeles would know the names Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, Charles and Ray Eames. Some would even know Pierre Koening and Craig Ellwood, but Quincy Jones has been in the shadows for a while. One wonders what is so relevant about Quicy Jones today that suddenly put him on the architectural map and attracted the interest of curators and the public (besides the fact that Jennifer Aniston bought one of his houses, which I personally refuse to believe is the reason for this sudden interest in his work).

Quincy Jones was a local architect, he was raised and worked in Southern California. He had an extensive career in Los Angeles, during which he famously integrated tract homes into landscape and made them more popular. He went on to design many high-end homes and some institutional buildings. The exhibit show him as a great collaborator because what is popular today in Los Angeles is to demonstrate that architecture is not about a personal style of an architect, but about collaboration (as if every architect does not already know that in their daily correspondence with clients, engineers, and contractors). Another idea of the exhibit is to show his architecture from inside out, instead as an iconic object, the legacy of Nikolaus Pevsner. The exhibit shows mostly sectional drawings and blown-up photographs of interiors in an attempt to bring the visitor inside.

One could say that the current interest in Quincy Jones work parallels the US interest in local, sustainable architecture, or in promoting collaborative practices, or in attempting to popularize architecture by bringing it closer to general public through interiors. But, I would say, that Quincy Jones' greatest contribution was the dissolution of boundaries in architecture. Many of Los Angeles modernists attempted to bring the outside inside, integrated gardens or water features into their design, but none attempted to erase boundaries between inside and outside, up and down, nature and building, as Quincy Jones did. His Case Study House (see picture below) was dug into the ground, yet the approach gave no indications of that condition. The roof uniformly covered the pond as if it is inhabitable space. Trees are inside the house as much as outside the house etc. This discussion in architecture is nothing new. Many will claim that Diller and Scofidio returned this discourse with The Blur building, but a one-off Pavilion in Switzerland is not a global movement. One can postulate that this exhibit and the return of Quincy Jones to the public is a way the dissipation of boundaries is fining its way into the mass culture. His work raises another point that is relevant today: because he dissolved boundaries entering inside his work is impossible except literary entering inside. As his work suggests, architecture can not be represented through drawings, models and photography, it must be experienced.

Are franchises a good model for architectural practice:
SOM LA

Does anyone wonder how architectural offices start their operation?

I visited SOM LA last week and it made me wonder. How do architectural offices operate in US, why are they so unstable, and can franshising be the answer to a profession that connects the individual's name to their architectural work?

Situated on the 29th floor of a downtown highrise as if to say that they are part of the corporate America looking high up over everyone, SOM LA is a small start-up company. Walking into the office, there are pictures of great SOM projects, none of which were built by LA office. They now have 28 people in the office. The grand corporate entry leads into the back office filled with tables all pushed in the middle. Clearly an imporvisation and a temporary setting, this space is a sad image of what SOM used to represent: power and prosperity of a great nation.

For those who do not know, Skidmore, Ownings, and Merrill, LLP is originally founded in Chicago in 1936. Wikipedia claims that SOM is an American architectural and engineering office, but I have never met one engineer that worked for SOM in any of the ten offices around the world. It is, however, the biggest and the longest lasting American corporate office.

SOM LA was founded only couple of years ago as a start up office and a franchise of the great SOM. Three former employees of AECOM, a giant engineering office with rapidly shrinking architectural department, made an agreement with SOM in San Francisco to open a branch in Los Angeles and try to get projects under the SOM name. These founders worked brefly for SOM in San Francisco in the distant past and have "SOM genes," according to the SOM website. With less than 10 people in the office they won the project for the new LA Federal Courthouse project. Now they claim they have a small housing project in Hollywood, a student housing for UCSB, and a master-plan in Latin America.

Most architectural offices close down after the founders pass away, the new generation opens their own offices or move to other offices, but rarely do architects work under other people's names for generations. Not many people remember who Skidmore, Ownings, and Merrill were, nor what their ideas were, but they still work under the name of SOM.

The newest franchise of SOM, their Los Angeles office, is clearly a start up office, with their poor organization and sad working conditions they are nothing more than a midsize office struggling to survive. But unlike a midsize architectural office, SOM LA already has a international masterplan and a mayor federal building. Maybe franschising in architecture works? Maybe architects in US could sacrifice a bit of individual ego for the sake of better built environment?