Walk through the Westin Bonaventure or the Macy’s Plaza in downtown Los Angeles and the reaction to the 1970s urban environment becomes immediately apparent. The buildings are inward-turning, reflexive microcosms which ask for, and provide, no interaction with the larger downtown environment. To walk past architect Charles Luckman’s Macy’s Plaza at 7th Street and Figueroa Street is to confront a fortress of brick and metal, self-contained and outwardly imposing; it is all the worse for being at the intersection of a major mass transit hub, the 7th and Metro Station, where the Red and Blue light rail lines connect. The Westin Bonaventure hotel, designed by John Portman, is somewhat less offensive, but only as a result of its iconic design. At street level, it rises in a single monolithic concrete square, and it is only at a distancethat one can appreciate the soaring concentric circles that have come to be a symbol of downtown Los Angeles.

Noted Postmodernist Frederic Jameson wrote of the Bonaventure in Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism that the structure “aspires to being a total space, a complete world, a kind of miniature city . . . it does not wish to be a part of the city but rather its equivalent or replacement and substitute.” The same can be said of Macy’s Plaza, as well; both structures give the illusion of self-containment upon entering, with vast vertical interiors and giant windows to the sky, designed to provide a facsimile of expanse and openness in an effort to minimize the feeling of enclosure. The irony is that neither opens up to the rest of the world, nor did the architects have any desire to integrate their buildings into the community. They were designing monolithic structures designed to serve a visitor who feared to travel too far alone on foot out of doors. Each spoke, in an eloquence of brick and concrete far more forceful than words, of the troubled nature of the 1970s Los Angeles in which they were constructed. Their focus on security and controlled entrance—indeed, the Bonaventure can only be accessed from one entry after dark—belies a mentality focused entirely on creating an isolated structure, one that protects as much as it provides.

How times change. Two unrelated but complementary shifts have colluded to reshape the way architecture and design firms view the emerging neighborhood that is downtown Los Angeles. The first of these is the anti-sprawl movement, specifically Smart Growth, which culminated in Los Angeles in the 1999 passage of the Adaptive Reuse ordinance. Smart Growth’s primary focus is to create a mixed-use environment in exhausted city centers in an effort to combat suburban sprawl. It has gained a newfound urgency in an era where fossil fuels are increasingly expensive and environmental sustainability is a primary concern among architects, urban planners and indeed the general public. The second shift is the decline in crime rates across downtown Los Angeles. The last ten years have seen a rapid decline in crime in the region, and downtown Los Angeles crime rate is at its lowest point since 1944, according to the Central Division of the Los Angeles Police Department.

As a result, almost every new project in downtown features ground-level retail which opens out into the sidewalks and streets of a neighborhood developers once tried to forget existed. Where once downtown was a disjointed series of islands of development, now chains of restaurants, galleries and bars flourish. The isolationist archipelagos remain, stretching along the Figueroa corridor; however, now they are ignored by retailers, passed over in favor of more urban-friendly projects such as the adaptive-reuse complex known as the Higgins Building, which features an art gallery, two restaurants, an independent coffeehouse, and a bar—all of which are accessible only from the street rather than from within the building itself. The result is a street presence entirely centered on the pedestrian, encouraging a walking culture that differs dramatically from the bunker mentality projected by the austere exteriors of downtown’s older edifices.

Similarly friendly pedestrian zones can be found in the Old Bank district along Fourth Street and Main Street and in the South Park district. Two of these areas are adaptive reuse; the other, specifically the area around The South Group’s developments Evo, Elleven and Luma, is entirely new construction. Yet what all of these regions have in common is a horizontal emphasis, a structure that emphasizes the human: the spaces are intimate rather than cavernous, the windows stretch lengthwise rather than upwards, and sidewalks serve as extensions of real estate. In fact, so confident is The South Group in the newfound viability of downtown as a neighborhood that they fought city plans to widen the streets around Evo, South and Luma. South Group’s counter-plan was to instead create wide sidewalks with benches and flora in an effort to aid walk-ability in the fledgling district. They eventually prevailed. Meanwhile, at Fourth and Main, a collection of adaptive reuse loft complexes houses galleries, restaurants, bars and coffee shops on the ground levels, creating a nexus of walkable spaces that preceded many of downtown’s newer offerings. Tom Gilmore, designer of the loft complexes that provide the residential base which supports the businesses on Fourth and Main, was one of the earliest developers to begin loft conversions after the passage of the Adaptive Reuse ordinance. Adaptive reuse has become a key component in revitalizing once-forlorn blocks of abandoned buildings, primarily by converting those buildings into rentals or condos. Smart Growth advocates praised the Old Bank district, as did local critics; the Los Angeles Downtown News wrote in 2003 that “Fourth and Main has become something of a focal point, even a test case, for Downtown’s emerging residential community.”

So are these new buildings merely responses to external changes in downtown, or are these new projects, whether adaptive reuse or new construction, the vehicle of change in the socioeconomic climate of downtown? A recent report produced by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District suggests that the average income of downtown residents is $99,000. Many of these residents have moved into the neighborhood in the last two years, and added residents incur greater police presence and fewer darkened corners in which illicit activity can occur. A prime example of this is along Los Angeles Street, more notoriously known as Skid Row; while far from free of criminal activity, recent residential and retail activity, coupled with a new LAPD initiative which resulted in the arrest of many drug dealers along the corridor, have resulted in a safer neighborhood. Whether one agrees with the methodology employed in the LAPD sweeps is another question entirely, but the end result has been a street far more accessible than when Charles Luckman and John Portman were designing the face of downtown Los Angeles. The influx of new residents and pedestrian-friendly design to serve their needs creates a positive feedback loop, one that encourages smart growth in a city core which decayed during the postwar sprawl.

Evidence of such a positive feedback loop is evident in the L. A. Live complex, which is itself a product of earlier successes (such as Tom Gilmore’s) and is also a development lodestone, accreting new projects such as the proposed L. A. Central and Concerto, currently under construction by Astani Enterprises. L. A. Live is a collaborative effort: the Nokia Theatre, which opened in 2007, was designed by ELS Architecture, the public plaza is the product of Rios Clementi Hale Studio and the 54-story Marriott/Ritz-Carlton hotel is the work of Gensler. Each synergistically colludes with one another, creating a public space that is in itself a visually arresting destination, designed for tourism as much as for residents. It is no coincidence that L. A. Live is optimistically referred to as “Times Square West” by its supporters. The synergy of the feedback loop is equally evident in the design elements of the South Park projects: the design was intended to mirror that of the Staples Center across the street, and L. A. Live’s own architecture is influencing other buildings in the vicinity.

Two such projects are the Met Lofts, which features a light display meant to play off of L. A. Live’s distinctive LED displays, and 717 Olympic, which is installing multi-story graphical billboards on the lower floors of the building which will mirror those on the north face of L. A. Live. The aforementioned Concerto is the proposed site of fourteen-story LED screens which Sonny Astani envisions being similar to those seen in the seminal science fiction film Blade Runner.

None of these singular visions of the South Park area would have occurred but for the investment L. A. Live represents; L. A. Live would likely not exist were it not for the pioneering efforts of Tom Gilmore and developers like him who took advantage of the Adaptive Reuse ordinance in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The continuing urban renaissance will require imaginative design and a dedication to engagement with the neighborhood. Fortunately, the new wave of architects and urban planners working in the area seems to understand the new face of downtown, rather than the austere visage of yesteryear, and it seems we are on the verge of a downtown Los Angeles more vital than at any time since the 1940s.

>Written by d/visible contributor Nickolas Sifuentes.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Business, Architecture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.