3:56 PM | Daniel Libeskind, Downtown, Figueroa Corridor, mixed-use, New York City, parking, Planning Commission, skyscraper, starchitect
The Los Angeles City Planning Commission granted approval to a proposed skyscraper that would rise near the Convention Center between Figueroa and Flower streets downtown. The project is the second of two large towers planned for downtown with Korean investment. Both projects (the other being the Korean Air project at Figueroa and 7th Sts.) have been criticized as too large and cataclysmic, even for this part of the city. The recession-era timing may also seem strange. But bold developers citywide are scrambling to commence projects - taking advantage of development-hungry bureaucracies and cheap construction costs - in hopes of fervent demand upon completion.
The 43-story skyscraper is being designed by Daniel Libeskind, the famous and somewhat controversial architect behind the flailing Freedom Tower in New York City. Program calls for 273 residential units stacked above an eight-level groundfloor parking platform, as well as street-oriented retail, restaurants, and spa. Libeskind is a proud member of the profession's new guard of "starchitects," (in)famous for flashy, tourist-friendly icons designed to dazzle, and desperate for attention. These buildings are caustic to the city because they ignore their contexts and instead focus on themselves. Downtown's wealth of these buildings has created a dizzying array of built islands, and has done little to improve the urban experience.
LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne blames this phenomenon on the city's "all-or-nothing" approach to development. Libeskind's tower will replace a surface parking lot, but dozens of other parking lots still plague the city's center. The city's permitting process, especially downtown, is so lengthy and formidable that few smaller scale developers even attempt to build there. The resulting mixture is of ugly, underutilized asphalt and daunting, expensive megaprojects. The modest, three- to ten-story resdiential blocks that create the connective tissue in a successful city are missing. This city has been clamoring for big-name architecture for years; now that we have it, we don't know how to do it. Be careful what you wish for, LA.
Posts
1 comments:
What does Libeskind know about residential design? This guy hired another architect to design his own apartment!!
(Libeskind was later caught out in a lie to the New York Times. In an interview with the Times, he said he designed his own apartment. The Times had to print a rare correction when it became known that Libeskind’s wife and business partner had actually hired architect Alexander Gorlin to design the Libeskind home. - What does THAT say about the Libeskinds' confidence in their firm’s work?)
Post a Comment