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con t inued from p age 1 understanding as are high aft artifacts of limited production. A work. 01 architecture may begin as a pnvate statement 01 taste. but all works of architecture inevitably become to some degree public artifacts that Bre part of everyone' s dally hfe. A perusal of the pages of Expeflmenlal Architecture In Los Angeles does not reveal that thiS city has a distinct context. hiStOry, and typology of vernacular architecture that IS both all I\S own as well as part and parcel of Amencan urbanism as iii whole. Local avantgarde architects tend to behave as IhOtigh these phenomena that unify urbanism In Southern California Simply do not eXIst. As a result, reinforcing degrees 01 agreement between bUildings or districts has generally been a low priority with much recent arChitecture, JUS t as the Idea of taking cues from a neighborhood or regional repertOire of bUilding type s IS seen here as a limitation on creallVlty, David Gebhard has pointed out that even the malor architectural innovations of pioneer modernists, such as Frank lloyd Wright, Irving Gill and Rudolf Schindler, had little urbanlstlC Impact. and Leon Whlteson notes that Los Angeles cont inues 10 be a place where small firms , howe\ler InnO\lall\le they may be In the context of the ir small COmmiSSiOnS, stili have nO real effect on the city as a whole , Glyen the mutual incompatibility of the agendas of high art architecture as they Inform many indiVidual bUildings and the agendas of popular taste as they Inform the common landscape, II IS difficult 10 undersland how thiS could be otherwise. Experimental A rchi tecture does litt le to help overcome this incom patibility bu t does a lot to help one segment of architectural producers-"boutiQue" formalist olfices-domlnale the professional and public perception of architecture. ThiS kind of domination is fTl()(e acute In Los Angeles than perhaps anywhere else in the U.S. While Southern California may still be relatively isolated from East Coast publications, it has Increasingly become mandatory for the established media 10 trac k ac tivity here and to focus their eyer more myopic eye on the most glamorous and the least SOCially relevant categories of bUilding production. Each new wave of commodified alchltects IS offered up as more daring, IconoclaShC, and orr glnal than the last. "Los Angeles, where trends come from" proclaimed a 1989 Issue of Metro Home magazine devoted to architecture and deSign In the city. As the speed of commodification Increases, so does the speed of the star·maklng process. The Metro Home Issue, which typifies recent coverage of architecture In Los Angeles. featured a group of avant-garde archl\ects With pnmarlly sculptural or Ylsual concerns. But the wav these architects were presented seemed modelled alter the media packaging of Inlerlor decorators, fashion deSigners, and most of all, mOYie stars. It would
seem perfectly logical to view Experrmental Architecture as part of thiS phenomenon that seeks to invent celebrr· ties rather than provoke cllllcal diSCUSSIOn Motlvallng the beach-comblng to uncover the next meola star hes the assumption that formal invention is the most Important aspect of architecture. In other words, the more a bUilding differs from the pubhc's understanding of wha t building IS, the more "information," and therefore the biggest poSSible media event, It generates. The more an avant-garde firm. such as Coop Hlmmelblau, treats thelf work as pure formal abstraction, the more prestige they have - not With the public but With the ir peers, The more the media treats "avan t-garde " architects as they do artists, the more avant-garde architects are encouraged to treat their buildings as though they are walk·in sculpture. In the artificial land of the press, "movie star" architects often ignore the experiential character of their work, let alone the SOCial and real world forces that are part of architecture. Without the burden of having to communicate w ith the public. these architects can exploit their fictitious freedom to gratify indiyidual whim and pursue a course of sel!aggrandizement. Younger architects today seem to be disconnected from even the most recent architectural history of Los Angeles. In decades I'IOt very long paSt there was a local tradition of modernist architecture that often carried With It a moral imperative based on ambl' tious definitions of how much social change could actually be implemented by architects . Irving Gill was concerned wi th providing decent wor ker housing and in simplifying the amount of work that houseWives had to do. Charles Eames explored the Idea of uSing ready-made elements
Top: Hubert/Zelnio, Wal/a/Sussman Apartment BOf!om : Victoria Casasco, Aznar Resrdence
like a kit of parts, and even Wallace Neff experimented With Simple concrete houses. ThiS modernist Imperative was exemplified by the Case Study Houses program which was operated by the now legendary Arts and Archsrecrure magazine between 1946 and 1966. John Entenza, the pubhsher of the magazine, commiSSioned architects such as Pierre Koen ig and Craig Ellwood to deSign houses which were built as real hfe demonstra· tlons of how modernist deSign could Integrate techno logy, such as the steel frame, Into bUildings that accommodated contemporary hfe styles. Wtllie In many cases thiS modernist morahty was often an excuse to make deSign deCISions that were actually based on formal preferences, It did prOYlde a fram ework for tying bUildings back to their means of production and to the ways people use them. This seems to be the only aspect of the modernist tradition that has SUrviVed, for the operatlye avant-garde Imperative In much current Southern Cahfornia avant-garde alchltecture is largely forma l. Even when the avant-garde IS concerned w ith issues of urban order, this urban order IS often treated as large scale sculpture or the formal resolution of latent sit e geom etry, divorced from the complexity of actual site issues. This kind of divorce has been aided and abelled by the degree to which the art world has reinforced the solipSistic role played by many contemporary architects. It IS not the devotion to or Interest In formal or theoretical Issues borrowed from the an world that is the problem. The problem is that the architect's freedom is often paid for by the loss of a larger consciousness of architecture's SOCial role, some of the consequences of which are already clear. Avant-garde architecture has not been able to comment on or respond to the radical demographIC transformation of Los Angeles Into a substant1ally Immigrant mult1cultural community, nor has It addressed many of the pressing SOCial problems that the city faces As the archn ess and brillieness of postmodern Irony and the anti-social abstraction for abstraction's sake of decon wear thin. we need to explore approaches that rein force likeness and communalities Within the environment rather than fragment It further. I! we are ever to have a segment of building production whose deSign Intent can be clearly understood and appreCia ted by both the pubhc and those Inculcated In architectural cul ture, archi tec tural cognoscenti Will have 10 stop dismiSSing popular cul tural values and find some com mon ground With the public Steoping beyond the cu lt of the archltect-as-artlst/personality, acknowledging and chronIcling the COnt ext and the Yernacular that does eXist In Southern Calrlornla IS a first step In that direction If Yernacular architecture can be Judged and foun d lacking by the standards of lor mal purity assOCiated With high·art architecture, then, perhaps by virtue of that lack and by con stituting a call for archi tecture to communicate wi th a larger constituency, vernacular architecture also functions as a critique of high art archllecture, In thiS sense. it might be said that vernacular architecture performs the cfl\lcal function absent from the contemporary archllec· tural press Books such as Experimental Architecture are not bad because there is anything wrong with the indiYidual designs they present. Rather, what is wrong is the way such books tend to present one category of bUilding production as though it were the sum total or the apogee of aU architectural production. ThiS narrowness of focus and omiSSion of other possibilities denies us all the possibility of asking primary and critical questions. How do those IndiYlduals already inculcated in architectural culture coexist with the world around them that largely ignores the values and rules of high art arChitecture? What IS the re la tlOl'lship of moSt people to the actual built environment? How do the buildings that we see from the freeway. the developer housing, and the blank-faced speculative office bUildings and shopping malls get built and deSigned? How do they effect the Quality 01 our lives? Architec ts and the media alike must become more preoccupied With Ihese Issues, even though they are precisely the issues that never get InYlted 10 architecture's beach party.
Ed,IO"S Note A velS,oo 01 1~1S essay was 10 ~ave been ,ocluded ,0 Expel/melll.' A/chl l l/clU,e m Los AnQele. publish II
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A,noll declined 10