Dreamscapes

This weekend saw the opening of the much-anticipated action thriller, Inception - the biggest non-sequel, non-adaptation box office hit since... Avatar? Inception tells the story of a rogue group of good-looking "dream investigators" who pry the secrets of unsuspecting victims through their highly architectural dreams. Ellen Page, of Juno fame, plays the Paris architecture student charged with designing the labyrinthine (but rarely surreal) landscapes where the high-speed illusory pursuits take place. Among the backdrops for the action are a Soviet-era arctic military base, a placeless cosmopolitan hotel, and a post-apocalyptic Waikiki beach. While the majority of the plot occurs in an in-flight dream en route to Los Angeles, many of the shooting locations, where named and not, are within our city limits.

While Los Angeles is certainly not new to appearing on screen, her scenes in Inception are used not to establish any real life locale or support a preconceived stereotype about this city, but to represent a dreamscape - a building or a place so amorphous or unreal that we might conceive something similar in our own dreams. The architecture of Los Angeles has long been identifiable in this way: with its longs stretches of Wild Wild West ramshackle monotony punctuated by look-at-me displays of ostentatious if not always intelligent landmarks. Now, one of the film's shortfalls (spoiler alert) is that, aside from liberal shows of antigravity and a compellingly tensile Paris skyline, there are conspicuously few scenes that make full use of the absurdity and total unreality that we know dreams are so often capable of. But to the film's credit, a large part of its thrill is that we never quite know when we are in a dream and we are in reality - a testament to the frightening lucidity that we also know dreams are capable of.

Among the most identifiable of the Los Angeles shooting locations are a downtown street corner (Hope and Wilshire), the Music Center and DWP headquarters, and the sleek 2000 Ave of the Stars in Century City. The first of these is used to represent a presumably New York City street, lined with skyscrapers and filled with yellow taxi cabs. In fact, an entire chase seen is filmed at this intersection alone, but is meant to read like a continuous series of urban intersections. If not for the distinctly eye-catching Famima!! that appears constantly in the bottom left quarter of the screen, we might never know we weren't actually hurtling down the monotonously urban New York City blocks. The second is perhaps the best example. The music center and the DWP are possibly the two most distinct of our mid-century modernist palaces. The cold, wide emptiness and the unrelenting repetititon of steel and glass reflecting off the shallow moat waters somehow feel equally at home in our nightmares as they do as our civic centers. The last of these represents more the hulking bravado that has come to characterize the contemporary office building. But the glass tower with a gaping hole through its center, better known as the home to the CAA talent agency, plays the sexily anonymous hotel where our dreamers rub shoulders with billionaires and high-rent prostitutes.

But aside from the brief dream-like glimpses of our city inserted alongside more majestic profiles of Tokyo and Paris, Inception has also brought architecture back into the discussion of cinematic spaces, and along with it, the more complex and intriguing question of what the spaces in our dreams look like.

The Grove, still our city center

In an eye-catching display combining social media, outdoor advertising, and pedestrian involvement, the Canada Tourism Bureau has set up shop in vacant storefronts in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, to show a new generation of prospective American travellers all the wonders of our northern neighbor, via live Twitter and Facebook updates from actual visitors. The choice of our three largest cities is quite obvious, but their locations therein less so. They would have to choose locations that not only feature the most pedestrian traffic, but the ones that are most high-profile, in order to garner wider attention, like from the media. So Times Square for obvious reasons in New York, and Chicago's Michigan Ave is that city's main ritzy shopping thoroughfare.

And for LA? None other than the Grove - that much-debated yet much-loved outdoor mall cum public place that is still a huge metric of our urban identity, eight years after its completion. The Canadian bureau's decisioin to invest there poses a great reminder that the Grove is the sort of place we Angelenos like to spend our time and our money, especially given the recent high-profile openings of pseudo-urban mega-places like LA Live and the Hollywood W hotel TOD. The Grove is a civic space as much as it is a shopping mall - we go there to people-watch, to walk our dogs, to work on our laptops, and to grab a bite to eat. But it is a privately built and privately maintained civic space - devoid of the riff-raff we might find at actual public places, and unfortunately devoid of much of the character as well.

When Caruso Affiliated proposed the project early last decade, there were many questions - what would happen to the farmer's market? (it is flourishing), do people actually want to live above shopping centers? (largely no), and what's next? Well, to date the Grove has easily been Caruso's greatest success, with the Americana of Glendale a fairly big disappointment. And the formerly drab Santa Monica Place will reopen this Summer to resemble more closely its crowded but breezy neighbor, the 3rd St. Promenade, another popular urban space in the hands of national chain stores. So if it takes profit-minded developers to build our city's places, and if we are content paying for these places ourselves, through spending rather than taxes, then I see no problem with our urban spaces looking or feeling different from the more traditional ones in older cities. So it goes - what's good enough for Canada is good enough for us.

Missing the Target

If you've been keeping up with the real estate development headlines lately, you might have noticed that every big, ambitious LA development plan includes a Target as its desired anchor tenant. Projects at various phases of development in Mid-City, Crenshaw, Hollywood, Westwood, and Downtown all tout Target as their crowning retail centerpieces. Some actually have the stated support of the Target Corp., while others merely crave the discount store's shiny urban appeal or its supposed potential to spur surrounding retail growth. The CRA has been lusting after Target for years in its attempt to turn a stretch of Washington Blvd south of Downtown into a dense big box haven. Oxymoron?

But why target Target? Perhaps developers point to the success of the West Hollywood Gateway, a project that has seen enormous traffic for its own tenants but has done little to turn around that languishing stretch of Santa Monica Blvd in eastern WeHo. Or perhaps they see Target much in the way the rest of us see it: as the hipper, cleaner alternative to those other trashy discounters we are loathe to visit. But the truth is that as a company, Target is in no position to expand its retail locations as aggressively as these developers might like. Neither is the Los Angeles customer base large enough or desirable enough to support a wealth of new stores.

Wal-Mart on the other hand, may take the cake on both these fronts. It is Wal-Mart, not its snooty rival, that has benefitted most from the recession, as many consumers seek deep discounts on their purchases rather than cut them out altogether. Secondly, Wal-Mart is aggressively studying a plan to roll out a new retail format that is much smaller than its traditional supercenter, and better fitted for urban real estate and the urban consumer. With Wal-Mart's small town and suburban locations built out, and no signs of slowed growth, that company is turning to a new potential demographic - a smart move considering the increasing costs of suburban living and the languishing retail opportunities there. Furthermore, Wal-Mart has but one location in our city limits (albeit a successful location), housed in a stately multi-story Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall location that was once home to a Sears. Should their new urban shop implementation work, I see no better place for a roster of mini Wal-Marts than Los Angeles. And as long as our developers are scrambling to attract their treasured Target, Wal-Mart is sure to score some good rental deals.

Subway-to-the... VA Hospital?

According to Metro's latest round of community update meetings, the so-called Subway-to-the-Sea rail extension to Santa Monica is simply "out of the realm of funding feasibility," as is the spur joining Hollywood and Highland to the Wilshire route via Santa Monica Blvd. We knew Villaraigosa's 30-10 initiative was too good to be true. But look at the bright side, thanks to Measure R spending, construction on the subway line could begin as soon as the end of 2011.

Initially, construction of the first phase would terminate at a station in Westwood near Wilshire Blvd. But after suggestions by locals, project planners found that a 1-stop extension beyond the 405 to the Veterans Administration campus would indeed return higher ridership and decrease traffic congestion under the freeway. Beyond the VA however, ridership estimates decrease with every successive station, meaning dwindled fiscal feasibility. While Subway-to-the-Sea certainly has a nice ring to it, there simply isn't enough demand in the Santa Monica area to warrant an expensive underground rail construction, especially considering that the Expo phase 2 light rail extension to Santa Monica is already approved and will be completed far sooner than any phase on the Wilshire route. The UCLA area is home to the city's second largest job center outside of Downtown and will benefit enormously from the traffic relief and increased mobility brought by a more expedient subway extension.

As for the Santa Monica Blvd spur, the connection between Hollywood and Beverly Hills will make sense in the future, but right now that stretch also doesn't support the critical building density that would make a subway line pencil out. But as long as the City of West Hollywood continues its hungry, authoritarian concessions to big name developers, the Santa Monica Blvd corridor may well get its subway.

Best of Dwell on Design

Interior designers, interior decorators, architects, buyers, set designers and home remodelling freaks descended on the LA Convention Center this weekend for Dwell on Design, the west coast's largest design convention. That the event was held here rather than Dwell Magazine's home base of San Francisco is a testament to LA's growing weight in the design industry (if not the fact that there are more decor shops per capita here than you would think financially sustainable). In addition to a handful of seminars ranging from the LA River to local microbreweries, there were of course the multitudes of designer stands, hawking goods and pushing new ideas. The word of the day was green, but the irrational exuberance of yesteryear was present as well. Conspicuously absent from the displays was any aggresive pursuit of technology. But there were still some pretty cool products. Here are my faves:

5. REFLECT Showerhead - Its non-condensing reflective metal face lets you guys get a close shave without risking any Psycho-esque shower cuts.

4. Vapur Anti Bottle - The foldable, rollable, reusable, washable water bottle is the bottled water replacement for those on-the-go types.

3. Dyson Air Multiplier - This sleek, bladeless room fan mimics the hyper-efficient design of Dyson's vacuum cleaners, while seaking to replace the wasteful air conditioner.

2. Woollypocket - The felt-like bags are made from recycled water bottles and can be hung alone as indoor decoration or strung together en masse to form grand outdoor living walls.

1. Nook Pebble crib mattress - Made from organic eucalyptus fibers, the hypoallergenic, water-repellant infant mattress uses pebble-like bumps to optimize nighttime air flow.

The Art of Advertising

Last week the MAK Center for Art and Architecture celebrated the conclusion of its seminal public arts project, “How Many Billboards? Art In Stead.” In an attempt to infuse art into an urban context where it is least expected, and draw attention to the conspicuousness of outdoor advertising in Los Angeles, the Center commissioned 21 artists to create large works that would occupy billboards across the city. From Silver Lake to West LA, drivers were greeted with surprising, sometimes subversive visual messages in place of the banal movie posters to which they were so accustomed. Supplementing the short-lived outdoor exhibition were a number of panel discussions organized by the Center around the often conflicting roles of public art and outdoor advertising. Unfortunately the session I attended seemed to be more of a town hall protest against the greedy lawlessness of the media companies rather than an academic discussion of art and commerce in the city. I have long believed that, with its year-round sunshine, car-obsessed sprawl, and of course its playing host to the film industry, LA is a city suited perfectly to—and in part developed from—a culture of spectacle. Our greatest landmark originated as an advertisement for a housing development, and the two biggest additions to our skyline in recent memory (LA Live and the Hollywood W) have paid painstaking attention to the inclusion of paid signage and outdoor media. The city’s main excuse for opposing big new outdoor advertisements is the fact that, unlike observers in Times Square or Tokyo’s Shibuya, LA’s eyes remain defiantly behind steel and glass cages hurtling by at speeds not suited to even temporary distraction. We are a city obsessed with and defined by our visual culture. This is a reality that makes a temporary citywide art show just as interesting as the capitalist establishment it seeks to question.

Click here to see photos and descriptions of the billboards.

Hollywood Freeway cap park inches forward

US Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) has agreed to request the $5.85m necessary to begin prelimary studies and planning for the park. Though this is a tiny droplet in comparison to the estimated $950m necessary to build the park, supporters say it is a crucial step. The park, thought by many to be a pipe dream since its conception in 2006, would comprise 44 acres of parkland on a "cap" constructed over the freeway between Hollywood and Santa Monica Blvds. The park is seen as a much-needed addition of open space to an area of the city that has only .005 acres of parkland per resident. Friends of the Hollywood Central Park, the non-profit founded to get the project off the ground, says the majority of the money will come from private foundations. It is one of 2 cap parks planned for the Hollywood Freeway.

Source: Los Angeles Business Journal

SFO pokes at drab LAX to woo travelers from Down Under

The City of San Francisco released the above video as part of a campaign to attract US-bound travelers from Australia and New Zealand to connect in San Francisco International Airport. While the "bad airport" featured in the cheesy video isn't directly referred to as LAX, our humble international terminal is the only other one with direct flights to Sydney and Aukland. OK, OK, we know LAX isn't the most pleasant airport to travel through, but it's getting an expensive upgrade! And besides, could the production quality of that video been any lower (c'mon, Gavin Newsom as a cab queue attendant)?

Source: LA Times

Korean Air chairman frustrated with state of downtown development

At the annual Town Hall Los Angeles meeting held last month, the chairman of Korean Air and owner of the Wilshire Grand hotel spoke of the urgency of jumpstarting his ambitious $1b redevelopment of that prime Wilshire Blvd spot. Since the economy soured, construction lending has largely frozen citywide. Downtown properties have been particularly insolvent, struck by an aftermath of an overspeculative pre-bust boom. Perhaps in a last ditch attempt to attract supporters, investors, and lenders, chairman Yang-Ho Cho promised 8,000 construction jobs and 4,000 permanent jobs to result from the project. Plans call for 560 hotel rooms and a 65-story office tower. Whether downtown's hotel and office market is built out remains to be seen.

Source: Korean Air

Long-vacant church gets religious owner of a different order

The historic Second Church of Christ, Scientist building on Adams Blvd near USC was just bought by the Art of Living Foundation, after sitting vacant for a number of years. The 100 year old building has become somewhat of a landmark in the North University Park neighborhood, and is notable for its wide-span oxidized copper dome and its soaring Corinthian columns. It was built in 1910 as the West Coast sister to Boston's First Church of Christ, Scientist, and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1986. The Art of Living Foundation, a 30 year old local spiritual group dedicated to yoga and meditaion, paid an estimated $10m for the property. A new-age Eastern religion taking the reigns from an older new-age Western religion? How LA.

Source: LA Times