Los Angeles isn’t always in the headlines for the right reasons – we certainly don’t hear a lot of great things from outside the USA – but flying in the face of negative opinion is this exhibition showing the city’s best side and proving that there is more to L.A. than film lots and the highway to Anaheim. A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture from Southern California, on show at the Museum of Contemporary Arts until 16th September, looks at the area’s impressive and progressive building design work from the last 25 years, and quite an eye-opener it is too.
There are some cracking examples among the two and three-dimensional exhibits here, not least Eric Owen Moss’s Samitaur, with its helmeted, lantern-jawed head swallowing visitors at one end of an otherwise brutal stretch of concrete. Outside of the city proper there are some futuristic artists studios in Santa Monica, and a science block from Caltech, Pasadena, setting for The Big Bang Theory. Come on, don’t pretend you don’t watch it. As well as looking at the existing urban landscape, three pavilions at the gallery are devoted to emerging architects who will be shaping the city in the coming years. Don’t believe everything you see on TV, there are plenty of nice things to look at in Los Angeles that aren’t just working in a diner until they land a soap opera role.
Brooks + Scarpa Architects
Bergamot Artist Lofts,
Santa Monica, California, 1999
Photo by Marvin Rand
Belzberg Architects
Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust,
Los Angeles, 2010
Photo by Iwan Baan
Greg Lynn FORM, in collaboration with
Lookinglass Architecture & Design
interior of Bloom House,
Southern California, 2012
Photo by Richard Powers
Morphosis Architects
Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Caltech,
Pasadena, California, 2008
Photo by Roland Halbe
Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects
Exterior Study for Formosa 1140,
West Hollywood, California, 2008
Courtesy of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects
Hodgetts + Fung
Wild Beast Music Pavilion,
Valencia, California, 2009
Photo by Tom Bonner
Ball Nogues Studio
Feathered Edge, 2009
Photo: Brian Forrest
VOID
Interior of Bobco Metals Co.,
Los Angeles, 2004
Photo by Benny Chan
Daly Genik Architects
Palms House, Los Angeles, 2011
Photo by Jason Schmidt
