Moby Los Angeles Architecture Blog

moby's photo blog of strange and beautiful architecture in los angeles.

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A Complete Guide to LACMA's First Piece of Architecture, the Most Spectacular House in Los Angeles

Photos by Elizabeth Daniels This morning, the LA County Museum of Art announced its first-ever architecture acquisition: the Sheats-Goldstein House high in the hills of Beverly Crest, designed by...

i haven't had an architecture update for a while...i know.  i'm sorry.

but this really caught my interest. LACMA bought the sheats-goldstein house, and now, in theory, we can all go there and look around and re-enact brian de palma movies.

ok, more architecture updates to follow. i promise.

moby

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i was in toronto this weekend, and looking out the window of my hotel, and i saw this perfect modernist apartment building gem. 

per usual, i know nothing about it. when it was built? by whom was it built? i have no idea? i have no idea.

but it's a gem, sort of looking as if it walked from brasilia to toronto and sat down in an otherwise leafy little suburb. 

maybe it's a space port.but i think that pretty much anything interesting looks like a space port. so we've decided, it's a space port.

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i've been really remiss in putting up architectural pictures.  i know.  i blame fluoride.  which is pretty much what i blame for everything. in the meantime, this amazing video

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so, l.a has a new best building. i say that objectively. the tea house in griffith park.  

it's as flawless a building as exists anywhere in l.a. it's an art project, a beautifully constructed little tea house in a very remote part of griffith park (which, by the way, is the largest urban park in the world, so by 'remote' it's actually truly 'remote').

it was built surreptitiously by artists, using redwoods that were damaged in one of the griffith park fires. it's a calm, humble, beautiful little tea house.

and it's l.a's best building (i also say that hoping that somehow using a little hyperbole will keep it from being torn down).

and to that end, please do what you can to keep it from being torn down.

here's a petition:

https://www.change.org/p/david-e-ryu-keep-the-griffith-park-tea-house-standing

and if you want to find it, well, go to dante's view near the top of the park and keep going.  it's on the north side of the park about a mile or so due east of the hollywood sign.

it's worth the trip, honestly.

moby

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first off: pictures taken with my phone. so, mea culpa. secondly: on saturday i went to a solstice ceremony on a 50 acre (or so it seemed) crazy gigantic bluff cliff promontory overlooking the ocean for as far as the eye could see. thirdly: on the crazy bluff cliff promontory there was an unfinished lloyd wright house. fourthly: i don't know why it's unfinished, but it's this beautiful mid century salmon colored concrete bunker cut into the hillside.  it has the best views of any house ever, possibly. fifthly: so, los angeles, land of solstice circles on bluff cliff promontories and unfinished iconic mid century architecture. thanks,

moby

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ok...so, a story.

i was invited to take part in a vegan cooking show with my friend brendan brazier. and i was given an address in laurel canyon. so, being happy to talk about veganism, i went.

bucolic laurel canyon, home of joni mitchell and neil young, cute houses and a little market that sells juice to film producers and aging hippies. and, apparently, a 50,000 square foot united states air force top secret decomissioned production facility now owned by a man who once saved me from being eaten by a giant spider (p.s, all of this is true).

we shot our vegan cooking show and then i wandered around for 30 minutes, through the byzantine catacombs and different levels and empty theaters and bizarre rooms with guillotines and empty desks. 

hooray los angeles for having a 50,000 square foot top secret military facility now used to make vegan cooking shows in a cute little neighborhood surrounded by desert scrub and oak trees.

(view part 2 here)

moby

p.s-oh, i forgot to mention it was owned by one of the getty's for a while, and apparently used to produce some odd 80's pornography.  i mean, of course it was.

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part 2/2, click here for part 1 of this post

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when i was growing up in connecticut and new york this was exactly what i imagined southern california homes to be like.

clad in wood, on stilts, modern but woodsy, probably with a hot tub in the back and one of the members of the momma's and the poppa's in the kitchen. some oddball trees and plants around the cement steps, and a child named after outer space on a big wheel in the driveway. 

from bauhaus to this house. 

the basics are super simple: a rectangle on some stilts. but nice details: clerestory windows, nice stilts, some cool steel i-beams, etc. 

l.a modernism, when done right, just seems so friendly. if 'friendly' is legitimate criteria when applied to architecture. i mean, how can you have austere and rigid modernism under eucalyptus trees in the sun?

moby

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this is great. that's all.

moby

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i could go on and on, writing about the ways in which an alien themed hotel in the middle of the desert is the perfect salve for existential despair and the potential insignificance of all that we as humans aspire to do.

i mean, when life is absurd does it make sense to pretend that it isn't? or does it make sense to build a ufo spaceship hotel at the 'gateway to death valley'?

i, personally, vote for the latter.

the world needs fewer strip malls, fewer mega-mansions, fewer fast food restaurants, fewer golf courses, and considerably more ufo themed hotels in the middle of the desert.

architecturally it can be summed up eruditely and succinctly as: a ufo hotel in the middle of the desert. http://la.curbed.com/archives/2014/03/tiny_desert_town_getting_flying_saucer_hotel_with_alien_pool.php thanks,

moby

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since i moved to l.a 5 years ago i've driven by 'gurdwara vermont' a few hundred times and been clueless as to what it is. well, apart from a giant white temple, that much i could tell just from looking at.

but now i know.  it's where the sikh population in my neighborhood go to be sikhs.

architecturally it's a quintessentially l.a building in that it's vaguely anomalous and beautiful and borrows from a different architectural traditions that were developed a few thousand miles away. 

plus it's next to palm trees. which is also quintessentially l.a, especially as 99% of palm trees aren't native to l.a.

it makes me happy to know that people can move to l.a from places that are on the other side of the world, but still find community and familiarity in this weird and baffling suburban city.

moby

p.s-today's mea culpa... i took these pictures with my phone, so they might not be the best architectural pictures i've ever taken... mea culpa.

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l.a, the dystopian megalopolis. a sprawling hydra headed monster eating everything in it's path, full of plastic surgery disasters and rapacious agents.

or, alternately, tree houses.

it's the hidden fact of l.a, that the crappy stuff is easy to find (traffic, roscoes, strip malls, etc) and the great stuff is hidden. but the fantastic irony for angelenos is that the majority of l.a is hidden and really nice.

like, by way of example, this tree house.

it's a tree house. and it's about a mile from hollywood.  or less. 

so here are some pictures of dystopian sprawling rapacious l.a as represented by a tree house, a field, and an old timey truck across the street from the tree house and the field.

moby

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ok.

i was doing some tv stuff at universal and i found myself wandering around with some time to kill and lo and behold i was in ye olde timey western land. and that's architecture, isn't it?

it is. and specifically southern californian architecture, as i don't know if other cities have plywood ghost towns in their midst(s).

so, plywood ghost towns. and a plywood mexican village. to be fair, there's plaster, too. plywood and plaster.

it's like a grad student thesis on architectural semiotics and the folly of follies.

i hope you get a chance to wander around plywood ghost towns some day.

it's odd.

moby

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ok, look, a house!

i'm obsessed with these little cabins in the angeles national forest (which is why i've posted them before). and i don't really want to know much about them, as i prefer to think of them as abandoned hobbit houses. or something.

there are around 50 of them, perched over and next to the river that might or might not have a name and that runs through sturtevant falls. sturtevant river? ok.

and at present they're all boarded up and kind of ominous. but pretty. and ominous. and without electricity. just waiting for their hobbits.

oh, and they're also in los angeles. i mean, i've said it before, and i'll say it many times again in the future, tautologically, but we live in a very odd city county place. if you live in, say, new york.  or brussels.  or berlin.  or tokyo.  you might be asking yourself, legitimately, 'how is this a city?' but yes, it is. and/or county. urban semantics. with hobbits.

moby

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mea culpa mea culpa mea culpa. i've been a lax (no airport pun intended) and terrible architectural blogger. mea culpa. i'm sorry.

and all i have in the way of atonement are a bunch of random pictures of los angeles (and, well, a wind farm nearby). which at the very least are odd and interesting portraits of this giant baffling city.

i promise i'll take pictures of houses again soon. i promise.

so, random pictures and a mea culpa.

i know, paltry at best. ok.

moby

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there are two l.a's (don't you love big, sweeping generalizations?). 

the l.a of palm trees and the l.a of pine trees. (of course there are more than 2 l.a's, i'm just employing reductionist drama.  thanks).

most people think of l.a as the land of palm trees. baywatch, beverly hills, etc. but there's also angeles national forest and griffith park and about a billion pine trees.

these pictures are from mt. baldy, which is in the angeles national forest. they were taken in february, in l.a county. and you'll see a little house (aka: architecture) where they give ski lessons.  at the top of a mountain. in l.a county.

i don't want to malign the l.a of palm trees.  palm trees are ok, plus they remind me of "day of the triffids". but the l.a of pine trees and parks and mountains is beautiful and often overlooked.

so here's a little alpine house where they teach skiing and snowboarding, a chair lift, and an ocean of pine trees. all in l.a, probably 50 minutes away from where you live.

moby