Throughout this class we have been searching for an answer to this broad question: What is LA? Keep in mind that this question has no right answer, but makes each of us question the city we live in and draw conclusions that satisfy our individual ideas.
I don't believe that everyone's experience during the lab focused on the negative aspects of LA like mine did, but nonetheless I feel that it was very important for me to recognize what I did. Exploring City Hall this week made me think about how secretive and fake Los Angeles can be. When we finally entered the building, navigating our way through a crowd of protesters, I was surprised to see that there was close to no interaction between City Hall workers. It seemed as though everyone was keeping to themselves, scared to reveal something.
Another very interesting aspect of City Hall that I noticed was the decrease in aestheticness as I made my way to the top of the building. The 1st floor is really the only floor that contains anything interesting. The top floors were as dull as can be.
In class today, we observed the interesting architecture of Walt Disney Concert Hall, the secretive nature of City Hall, the controversial passage on the LA Times building, and the below par praise that the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels receives compared to the cathedrals in Europe. After close observation of these buildings, do any of these buildings speak for LA as a whole? What do you think all of them have in common? Would these similarities be used by boosters or detractors? If you were to design or build a building that includes what you think the most important aspects of LA are, what would it consist of? (The last question is just for those of you who wanna have some fun)
I'm really intrigued by your description of City Hall. You'd think that once you got past the grand exterior of a formerly formidable sky scraper there would be some truth. You found more facades. I think the part that might have summed LA the best in your exploration was the front door. Even though local, political awareness is somewhat an anomaly in this city, the unrest and fight in each of those protestors stands out. We read about it all the time: people digging for more in LA. Oil, water, fame, money, love; people cannot seem to stop digging on this unsteady marshland. Maybe that is why these buildings struggle so much to represent LA. They paradoxically sunk their permanent foundations into temporary land. Into faults. I think this is why so many of us responded to the concert hall. It is messy, yet represents the epitome of architectural design. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteIf there's one thing I've learned in this class, it's that.
LA doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Your comments on our city hall experience are mostly true, but I would argue that we were looking way deeper than the average guest. The floors we visited after our trip to the top were meant for the people working in our city. We were not supposed to be on the floor for gang rehabilitation and focus groups. It was cool that we ended up there and I took something away from being on that floor, but it was not exactly like the aesthetics were purposely made worse just to make Los Angeles seem fake and secretive. I also think we may be reading into the attitude's of the people in the building a bit too much. Being that there was a protest outside interrupting their passage to work, and that many topics that city council men and women discuss are quite serious, I don't know if we can really call them out on keeping to themselves. I don't exactly expect people to be excited to talk to me when I am interrupting their workplace for my own less important school assignment.
ReplyDeleteI think that I might just keep talking about Buddhism in these comments because the more I read, the more pertinent so many things he said seem. Not long after from emerging from his spot underneath the tree, Buddha was sent a vision of the human people. The entire human race was a bed of lotus flowers. Some of the flowers were stuck in the mud below, coated and filthy, while others were making their way out of the mud, and others still were atop the mud and beginning to blossom. He took this to mean that all people have the potential to bloom, just some need more mud to be washed off before that could be possible. This realization is what drove Buddha to not only live with his Enlightenment, but also to teach his Enlightenment, and that spurned on Buddhism.
ReplyDeleteHunter asks "what is LA?"
Lucas says that LA doesn't make much sense.
Conor talks about how pieces of LA work.
I think that I want to ask about where LA is today. We have read a lot about how Los Angeles is so messed up, but that wasn't talking about today. How far has our lotus flower risen, and how much more will it take for us to bloom? (sorry that this comment is insane again)
I think we could all observe a gradient, from the concert hall to the mayors building. On one end we have this architectural masterpiece that isn't simply a derivative of another culture's style. The concert hall is not only marvelous, but it is also practical, with the strange shapes and contours creating a perfect space for performance music. Your description of the city hall contrasts this, with the first floor barely trying to look elegant and that facade completely falling away after further inspection. The other two fall somewhere in the middle with the LA Times building closer to the City Hall with its desperate clinging onto a different age and putting forward a face of success. The cathedral is on the genuine side with interesting art and architecture, yet still being built as the token cathedral in the city.
ReplyDeleteI believe that all of the buildings were able to capture different pieces of LA. Each building had its own uniqueness and characteristic to it. I think in a way the building represent the people that are coming to LA. As you mention that the bottom floor of City Hall was grand and luxurious, but as you climb you see the decline in beauty and you see the dark and unappealing side of City Hall. To go back to my point of how it represents the people, is that most of the people are coming to LA to gain some sort of wealth but as they start on the journey to reach this said wealth they see the struggle and corruption it takes. I think that the similarities that the buildings share can be used both by the boosters and the detractors because you can see the two sides of LA in each building.
ReplyDeleteI think that all of the buildings we visited were historical and informative of Los Angeles' past. Many people commented on my groups photo essay (LA Times building) saying that it encaptured a 1930s vibe, which was also our intention. The whole class seemed to agree that the way we interpreted these pictures had a lot to do with the music choice and the effect applied to the visuals. All these posts mention the individuality and uniqueness of each place and I find it interesting that most everyone at least had heard of (and some have been to before) these places but never had the chance to keenly observe or learn about them. Of course, places like the LA's most recognized newspaper base and the secure workspace for the mayor are huge identifier for our city.
ReplyDeleteJake, repeatedly you have expressed concerns over whether or not LA today reflects the LA in the texts we have read. I firmly believe it does. As evidenced by the protestors outside City Hall, the class's immediate understanding of the significance of the inverted "City Hall" sign on the police car, the videos we see of the excesses of LAPD, and stories like Hunter's about what a young black man must do to appear, for lack of a better word, non-threatening, there are still engrained problems within our system. Yes, those problems are not localized to Los Angeles, but LA takes it a step further. Look at the recent news articles that show up when you search "police brutality Los Angeles." Half of them have to do with a protest that was a part of a national movement. Half of them talk about Tarantino's stance. Half about the nation, half about an individual. What is missing? The city. This is a small sample size, but it is meant merely to illustrate a point. News agencies do not come without bias. But LA is unique because here it is allegiance to the city (read the oligarchs of LA not the typical person on the street) that drives said bias, rather than political ideology. LA is the home to the stars. Coverage of these stars routinely overshadows the needs of the everyday people. LA is home to corruption. It is home to violence. It is home to institutional racism. LA is home to police brutality and media bias. Has LA risen out of the muck and blossomed? I think we still have a long way to go.
ReplyDeleteCan I say that the buildings didn't really have anything specific in common? Maybe it was because they were all portrayed differently, but I don't think any of them individually are representative of Los Angeles as a whole. I think Los Angeles is too complex of a place for that. However, each of them did represent a part of the city in their own way. For example, I thought the City Hall essay felt very noir, and Hunter's description of the building echoes what we have been discussing about the dark and secretive aspect of Los Angeles. Contrarily, the concert hall looked artsy, modern, and out there...all very "LA" to me (think LACMA, street art, etc.) The cathedral, although still a sacred place, gave almost a laid back and casual feel. Somehow I don't see that happening in other cities like New York (also, people associate Los Angeles with this laid back culture). And the LA Times building emphasized the concept of every man for himself, something that What Makes Sammy Run? also demonstrates beautifully. Each building represents a certain part of Los Angeles, and the city is the embodiment of all those values.
ReplyDeleteIf any, I think that City Hall speaks for Los Angeles as a whole the most. However, all four of these buildings have some aspect of them that portrays Los Angeles in its negative and positive ways. City Hall I think portrays L.A. the most though, because it truly showed the beauty of the city, and the support that it gives it. From the description of the workers I could note what L.A.'s people were like, I could see one of its most important buildings that is central to how the citys is run, and I could see some of the history that the building holds for the city. I think that most of the similarities found in the four buildings would be used by boosters, but they are very difficult to point out, which makes all of the buildings more likely to be viewed in a detractor point of view. The buildings are all part of L.A.'s important history, that is clear, but it is the way in which we look at them which tells us more about L.A.'s present, and its future.
ReplyDeleteThe visual essay project seemed to the first time for me to examine a building or more generally a part of LA and solely that. My past experiences during labs and projects have been about searching for an explanation or a better understanding of Los Angeles. I felt in the moment when I walked down the metal halls. At Disney Concert Hall, I spent most of my time appreciating the architecture and the significance of the design rather than finding false comparisons to Los Angeles. Too often I feel that I dig for an "answer" or try to make sense of something that is not meant to be dissected. I find it important to often let things be rather than analyzing every detail. I don't think there is an explanation to Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a city.
ReplyDeleteMy experience with the lab was similar to joey's. When I wandered down into the maze of a chapel, I wasn't drawing comparisons or defining negative aspects of the place as much as I tried to appreciate the architecture of the unique building. To address the question of the building representing LA, I would answer that it depends on your perspective. Especially with a chapel, maybe someone from Europe would see the modern design of the chapel as offensive to the deep rooted traditional ways of the religion. But from the view of someone like me, I saw it as an interesting concept. Never before had I seen an architect attempt something so twisted so unique with a powerful building like this. The main chapel of LA isn't the stereotypical church, and maybe that's because LA isn't just a stereotypical city. Maybe the architect was trying to intertwine the chapel with the feel of LA, and so in that way yes the building I explored was a reflection of LA.
ReplyDeleteI want to push back on Mia's point that city hall speaks for Los Angeles more than the others. It is near impossible to choose one among the others simply because of the infinite diversity of perspectives we have been discussing. Maybe city hall represents the stereotype of Los Angeles in current events, but it would not do the city justice to claim that city hall speaks for the entire entity of LA. As Townsend stated, the buildings form a gradient. This small gradient is a snippet of the immense gradient that reflects Los Angeles history and culture.
ReplyDeleteSean, your comment really hit it spot on for me. The buildings we saw, apart from the people we dissected around them and within them, uncannily makeup a good picture of what LA is. You seemed to focus a lot on the LAPD corruption and police brutality, which is the truth in most cities; However, I believe that mainly focused on City Hall as its antecedent. But there were other aspects to each building that also contributed to the panorama of LA.
ReplyDeleteThe Cathedral was a modern take on a church. So modern, in fact, that it seemed like a last minute decision. As if the Mayor running LA realized that we had so many people flushing into the community that..."by god, city's have cathedrals right?"... so one was made– right next to the freeway. This reminded me immensely of the Disneyland architecture of LA. Like Olvera Street or Chinatown. All these individual makeshift places that are nothing more than a movie set to make a person believe in a facade.
The Disney Concert Hall is this extravagant colossal– building?). I don't even know if I can call it a building because it doesn't seem to look like any other building I've seen before. It reminds me of this fame seeking vibe I feel in Los Angeles. A vibe that says, look at me! I'm the most beautiful! I'm the most loved! I mean for god sake, the building had to be DE-POLISHED because it was blinding to many people while they were driving that it was causing accidents....
Lastly, the La Times was the most confusing for me to analyze. There was hypocrisy within the slides we saw. I couldn't get a feel for the lay out of the building, and, as Conor said, there inst just one building. The LA Times is a maze that stops your before you can even get too far into the building. But think about it, a maze is meant to trick you, yet a newspaper is meant to inform you of the truth. Wait a second... what? That is what I mean by hypocrisy.
City Hall = Corruption of our "protectors"
Cathedral = Movie Set Falseness
Disney Hall = Need for Attention
La Times = Deception of Media
^^^^^ All of that certainly makes up LA ... maybe a little pessimistic, but that's who I am.