wise_publication by Randy Dunbar

A e to L d i u G rtists 2011 The A ecember D

Editor in Chief Tyler Wise Writer T. Wise photography tyler c. wise interpretive dance t.c.w monkey trainer t. dog executioner t the wiseman mike check tyler and the wrecking company registered sherpa ty lee whyce

t.o.c. start- pg. 7 beyond the bread bowl pg. 12 rivera runs deep pg. 14 product pg. 18 joshua christiansen

no stranger to fashion design

pg. 22 julias schulman through the lense pg. 28. building with a twist disney hall

Letter from the Editor W

hat is a magazine? Well if you want to be literal you could say that it is a bound stack of papers with stories of current events written throughout, along with the advertisements and endorsements that keep it running. Well you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to be literal, you could look at it emotionally as a package made with love for the reader to sink their teeth into. If your really ambitious you could look at it from my view, a hell-ish beast that is nearly impossible to tame, and once you do, you end up with a loyal pet that is nothing more than a pile of papers with stories and pictures about recent events, but its your stack of bound papers and you hope you put it together well. Enjoy.

FOOD

Beyond the

Bread Bowl

The Fruit Bowls Are Beautiful

he Bombay Sapphire infusion of apples and pears are echoed in the cider and brandy, then there is absinthe and ginger beer for contrasting but complimentary flavors, and on top of all that the unique addition of Fee Brother Aztec Chocolate bitters. This is certainly not. This is certainly not a boring cocktail. It shows off some of the trendy flavors and techniques that are hot and is a great example of the modern mixology at its finest. Adam Schuman of New York’s Fatty Crab did a great job creating here.

Ingredients: * 1.5 oz. Bombay Sapphire infused with dried pear and apples (click for recipe) * 1/2 oz. Lucid absinthe * 1 oz. local apple cider * 1/2 oz. pear brandy (Adam recommends: Massenez Williams Poire Brandy) * 1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice * 2 dashes Fee Brothers Aztec Chocolate bitters * Ginger beer * cinnamon stick for garnish * lemon peel for garnish Preparation: 1. Pour the ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice cubes. 2. Shake well. 3. Strain into a highball glass filled with ice. 4. Garnish with a lemon peel and cinnamon stick.

“When I first saw this recipe I knew it had to be good, just reading through the list of ingredients you can’t help but be intrigued.” 7

DESSERT Order Dessert or a Second Glass of Wine?

By Sally Wadyka

here’s some evidence that moderate alcohol intake lowers the risk of heart disease, but one a day is considered the limit for women, says JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. (Some experts say that having two a couple of days a week is OK.) There are other problems with alcohol, even in moderation. Alcohol consumption is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, says Heather Spencer Feigelson, Ph.D., a senior epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, in Atlanta. And while the risk of breast cancer from one glass of alcohol is small, I’d choose dessert over a second cocktail. But… Since being overweight also raises the risk of breast cancer, as well as of diabetes and heart disease, go easy on the dessert. Sorbet or even a fruit tart is a better choice than, say, cheesecake. Better choice: dessert Sweet tooths, rejoice! While no one is suggesting that it’s healthy to eat a rich dessert, the research is pretty clear: Women should have no more than one drink a day.

“Sweet tooths, rejoice!”

MUSEUM OF TRAVEL BOWERS CULTURAL ART

Santa Ana’s cultured museum courtyard

ounded in 1936 by the City of Santa Ana through a bequest from Charles and Ada Bowers, the Bowers Museum is one of California’s finest and Orange County’s largest museums. In 1986, the museum closed its doors for a

offers exhibitions, lectures, art classes, travel programs, children’s art education programs, and other special community programs. The Bowers is proud to be honored by the local community and recognized by worldrenowned museums and industry

Museums, an honor only 5% of museums receive. In the past 15 years the museum has: produced more than 50 special exhibitions, many of which traveled nationally or internationally; published more than 24 exhibition catalogues; and increased its facility size from 7,000 square feet to its current size of 93,000+ square feet.

“The Best Museum in Orange County”

-The Readers of The Orange County Register for 14 consecutive years.

period of self-study. In response to community needs and input, it reopened in 1992 as a new cultural center, and expanded children’s programming in 1994 with the opening of the Kidseum. The museum also recently celebrated the grand opening of the 30,000+ square-foot Dorothy and Donald Kennedy Wing in February 2007. To achieve its mission, the Bowers

professionals as a cultural center that exemplifies excellence in its field. Evidence of program quality and distinctiveness includes: The Bowers has been voted “The Best Museum in Orange County” by the readers of The Orange County Register for 14 consecutive years. The Bowers is accredited by the American Association of

PEOPLE RIVERA RUNS DEEP

An Interview With Steven Rivera By Tyler Wise

The lead singer of Blissfully Dead and animation student at The Art Institute, Steven Rivera is a busy man. and most would imagine him to be partially insane. but he is surprisingly down to earth and it was great to sit him down for an intervieew with us.

“[Blissfully Dead is]Getting alot of local shows lined up and planning a small tour perhaps for the summer.”

Tyler Wise: So Steven,

hows life?

Steven Rivera: Busy like the bees ....Do bees still exist?

: I’m pretty sure they do haha you have a lot to be busy with.

SR: Indeed TW: What exactly takes up all

of your time these days?

SR: School work, band stuff,

more band stuff, and more school work plus the extra art and music i have to make for myself on the side to keep from going insane.

: I know the feeling. How is the band doing?

SR: Getting alot of local

shows lined up and planning a small tour perhaps for the summer

: Cool. When you say local tour, do you have any specific locations already in mind?

SR: Trying for the bay area.

We’ve been up there before and everyone seemed so nice

its not even funny!

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“In Los Angeles, by the time you’re thirty-five, you’re older than most of the buildings.” - Delia Ephron

The Heart of a City I

t’s a town after all. Seen ay night by air, the city seems a large bracelet of lights and pools. It is only 500 square miles but it feels larger. Divided into 80 districts and neighborhoods, at first the city seems disjointed, a bewildering terrain of mountains and valleys that ultimately touch the sea. Second in population to only New York City, Los Angeles could not be more different. One can still hide in the shadows and hills of a vast LA sunset. And more and more people choose to live here, ignoring the proclamation of Woody Allen in Annie Hall “that I don’t want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.”

Joshua

From Project Runway to New York Fashion Week, Designer Joshua Christiansen tells the MODE what the future holds for him.

Christiansen Joshua Christensen is no stranger to fashion design. This Washington native moved to Los Angeles in 2009 after majoring in Humanities/Art History at BYU. Christensen graduated FIDM in December of 2010, and was picked to participate in Season 9 of Project Runway. Back in Los Angeles, Christensen is currently working on two collections: one for FIDM Debut, and one for New York Fashion Week.

Graham: When designing a garment, what sources of inspiration do you draw from?

Joshua: My greatest source of inspiration is the culture

around me, and the general feelings I get from being involved in the movements of the people. I also pull inspiration from pop culture such as movies, music and other media sources.

G: What are your opinions on current trends? J: I think there are so many people following so many trends

that it’s cool for people to find what they’re comfortable with. I may not like all of the trends but it’s cool that the option is out there.

G: You were able to build a fan base from appearing on

Project Runway this season, how do you intend to continue this momentum?

J: I’m currently working on a full mens/womens collection with one of the contestants from the show and we are planning on showing in NY fashion week in February. It’s important to just keep going. The best question fans ask when they meet me is “Are you still designing?” I can’t help but laugh and tell them, ‘of course I am.’ Not winning the show did not crush my dreams. I’m more motivated and driven than ever before. Between the Debut show collection and the NY collection I hope to become a successful designer creating collection after collection.

G: You had to utilize a lot of unconventional materials

during your time on Project Runway; has that affected your resourcefulness as a designer?

J: Yes and no. I think the best lesson I learned on the show is that fashion can go beyond the conventional. I’m learning that it’s possible to just let go and really explore the possibilities of design. It’s important not to waste potential in design whether it’s using a new material or using new shapes or details. G: How has the direct competition you received through Project Runway affected your work ethic?

J: I’ve always worked hard but the show has shown me that I have to work even harder. There are so many talented individuals in the world and even if I can’t be the most naturally talented designer, I can still be the hardest working; and that will take me even further. G: How do you intend to differentiate yourself from other designers?

J: I am unique as a person and as a designer but I get what a man wants to wear. I will design clothes that work in fashion, business, and life. G: What do you hope to accomplish with your collection for FIDM Debut? J: I hope to show my individuality and perspective in design.

“Never give up on the dream. This is not an easy industry but if this is truly your passion, you will sacrifice and work until you make it.”

The best question fans ask when they meet me is “Are you still designing?” I can’t help but laugh and tell them, ‘of course I am.’ Not winning the show did not crush my dreams. I’m more motivated and driven than ever before.

My Debut Menswear collection is going to show exactly where I want to go in fashion. This will be yet another step in my conquest for powerful fashion.

G: What’s the next creative step in your career? J: Create a Fashion Empire! I look forward to working harder than ever before. So many amazing opportunities are opening up to me and I have to be prepared to take as many as possible. We’ll see what happens after Debut and NY but I hope to continue on a personal line of clothes working on my Menswear. I think a lot of people forget that I am almost exclusively a menswear designer. My debut collection and NY half will be my menswear.

G: How has your personal design aesthetic evolved? J: I think when I first started designing I placed limitations on my work but as I grow in design I find that I’m changing. My aesthetic is powerful, dark and romantic. I think as I grow this becomes stronger in my work. G: Besides fashion design, what are some other creative outlets that you’re interested in? J: I write quite a bit actually and have books full of ideas and creative writings. I still love studying art, and checking out museums and exhibits. It’s important to be as creative as possible. G: What words of encouragement would you give to prospective students, or fashion employees in the industry? J: Keep going! Never give up on the dream. This is not an easy industry but if this is truly your passion, you will sacrifice and work until you make it. That’s my plan.

Julius Sc

chulman Through the Lens

by Tyler Wise

ven if you’re confused by the fork in the driveway, which slopes up to the Edenic apex of Laurel Canyon, or don’t recognize architect Raphael Soriano’s mid-century design landmark, you can’t miss Julius Shulman’s place. It’s the one with the eight-foot-high banner bearing his name—an advertisement for his 2005 Getty Museum exhibition “Modernity and the Metropolis”—hanging before the door to the studio adjoining the house. As displays of ego go, it’s hard to beat. Yet the voice calling out from behind it is friendly, even eager—“Come on in!” And drawing back the banner, one finds, not a monument, but a man: behind an appealingly messy desk, wearing blue suspenders and specs with lenses as big as Ring Dings, and offering a smile of roguish beatitude. You’d smile, too. At 96, Shulman is the best known architectural photographer in the world, and one of the genre’s most influential figures. Between 1936, when a fateful meeting with architect Richard Neutra began his career, and his semi-retirement half a century later, he used his instinctive compositional elegance and hair-trigger command of light to document more than 6,500 projects, creating images that defined many of the masterworks of 20th-century architecture. Most notably, Shulman’s focus on the residential modernism of Los Angeles, which included photographing 18 of the 26 Case Study Houses commissioned by Arts & Architecture magazine between 1945 and 1967, resulted in a series of lyrical tableaux that invested the high-water moment of postwar American optimism with an arresting, oddly innocent glamour. Add to this the uncountable volumes and journals featuring his pictures, and—i

Shulman’s decision to call it quits in 1986 was motivated less by age than a distaste for postmodern architecture. But, he insists, “it wasn’t quite retiring,” citing the ensuing decade and a half of lectures, occasional assignments, and work on books. Then, in 2000, Shulman was introduced to a German photographer named Juergen Nogai, who was in L.A. from Bremen on assignment. The men hit it off immediately, and began partnering on work motivated by the maestro’s brand-name status. “A lot of people, they think, It’d be great to have our house photographed by Julius Shulman,” says Nogai. “We did a lot of jobs like that at first. Then, suddenly, people figured out, Julius is working again.” “I realized that I was embarking on another chapter of my life,” Shulman says, the pleasure evident in his time-softened voice. “We’ve done many assignments”—Nogai puts the number at around 70—“and they all came out beautifully. People are always very cooperative,” he adds. “They spend days knowing I’m coming. Everything is clean and fresh. I don’t have to raise a finger.” As regards the division of labor, the 54-year-old Nogai says tactfully, “The more active is me because of the age. Julius is finding the perspectives, and I’m setting up the lights, and fine-tuning the image in the camera.” While Shulman acknowledges their equal partnership, and declares Nogai’s lighting abilities to be unequaled, his assessment is more succinct: “I make the compositions. There’s only one Shulman.” In fact, there seem to be many.

There’s Shulman the photographer, who handles three to five assignments a month (and never turns one down—“Don’t have to. Everyone’s willing to wait”), and the Shulman between hard covers, whose latest book, the three-volume, 950-page Modernism Rediscovered, will shortly be published by Taschen. But the Shulman of whom Shulman seems most proud is the educator. In 2005, he established an eponymous institute in conjunction with the Woodbury University in nearby Burbank, to provide, according to the school, “programs that promote the appreciation and understanding of architecture and design.” Apart from a fellowship program and research center, the Julius Shulman Institute’s principal asset is its founder, who has given dozens of talks at high schools across Southern California. “The subject is the power of photography,” Shulman explains. “I have thousands of slides, and Juergen and I have assembled them into almost 20 different lectures. And not just about architecture—I have pictures of cats and dogs, fashion pictures, flower photographs. I use them to do a lot of preaching to the students, to give them something to do with their lives, and keep them from dropping out of school.” It all adds up to a very full schedule, which Shulman handles largely by himself—“My daughter comes once a week from Santa Barbara and takes care of my business affairs, and does my shopping”—and with remarkable ease for a near-centenarian. Picking up the oversized calendar on which

“I have thousands of slides, and Juergen and I have assembled them into almost 20 different lectures. And not just about architecture—I have pictures of cats and dogs, fashion pictures, flower photographs. I use them to do a lot of preaching to the students, to give them something to do with their lives, and keep them from dropping out of school.” he records his appointments, Shulman walks me through a typical seven days: “Thom Mayne—we had lunch with him. Long Beach, AIA meeting. People were here for a meeting about my photography at the Getty [which houses his archive]. High school students, a lecture. Silver Lake, the Neutra house, they’re opening part of the lake frontage, I’m going to see that. USC, a lecture. Then an assignment, the Griffith Observatory—we’ve already started that one.” Yet rather than seeming overtaxed, Shulman fairly exudes well-being. Like many elderly people with nothing left to prove, and who remain in demand both for their talents and as figures of veneration (think of George Burns), Shulman takes things very easy: He knows what his employers and admirers want, is happy to provide it, and accepts the resulting reaffirmation of his legend with a mix of playfully rampant immodesty and heartfelt gratitude. As the man himself puts it, “The world’s my onion.” Given the fun Shulman’s having being Shulman, one might expect the work to suffer. But his passion for picture-making remains undiminished. “I was surprised at how engaged Julius was,” admits the Chicago auction-house mogul Richard Wright, who hired Shulman to photograph Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House #21 prior to selling it last year. “He did 12 shots in two days, which is a lot. And he really nailed them.” Of this famous precision, says the writer Howard Rodman, whose John Lautner–designed home Shulman photographed in 2002: “There’s a story about Steve McQueen, where a producer was trying to get him to sign on to a movie. The producer said, ‘Look how much you change from the beginning to the end.’ And McQueen said, ‘I don’t want to be the guy who learns. I want to be the guy who knows.’ And Shulman struck me as the guy who knows.” This becomes evident

as, picking up the transparencies from his two most recent assignments, he delivers an impromptu master class. “We relate to the position of the sun every minute of the day,” Shulman begins, holding an exterior of a 1910 Craftsman-style house in Oakland, by Bernard Maybeck, to the lamp atop his desk. “So when the sun moves around, we’re ready for our picture. I have to be as specific as a sports photographer—even a little faster,” he says, nodding at the image, in which light spills through a latticework overhang and patterns a façade. “This is early afternoon, when the sun is just hitting the west side of the building. If I’m not ready for that moment, I lose the day.” He does not, however, need to observe the light prior to photographing: “I was a Boy Scout—I know where the sun is every month of the year. And I never use a meter.” Shulman is equally proud of his own lighting abilities. “I’ll show you something fascinating,” he says, holding up two exteriors of a new modernist home, designed for a family named Abidi, by architect James Tyler. In the first, the inside of the house is dark, resulting in a handsome, somewhat lifeless image. In the second, it’s been lit in a way that seems a natural balance of indoor and outdoor illumination, yet expresses the structure’s relationship to its site and showcases the architecture’s transparency. “The house is transfigured,” Shulman explains. “I have four Ts. Transcend is, I go beyond what the architect himself has seen. Transfigure—glamorize, dramatize with lighting, time of day. Translate—there are times, when you’re working with a man like Neutra, who wanted everything the way he wanted it—‘Put the camera here.’ And after he left, I’d put it back where I wanted it, and he wouldn’t know the difference— I translated. And fourth, I transform the composition with

furniture movement.” To illustrate the latter, Shulman shows me an interior of the Abidi house that looks out from the living room, through a long glass wall, to the grounds. “Almost every one of my photographs has a diagonal leading you into the picture,” he says. Taking a notecard and pen, he draws a line from the lower left corner to the upper right, then a second perpendicular line from the lower right corner to the first line. Circling the intersection, he explains, “That’s the point of what we call ‘dynamic symmetry.’” When he holds up the photo again, I see that the line formed by the bottom of the glass wall—dividing inside from outside—roughly mirrors the diagonal he’s drawn. Shulman then indicates the second, perpendicular line created by the furniture arrangement. “My assistants moved [the coffee table] there, to complete the line. When the owner saw the Polaroid, she said to her husband, ‘Why don’t we do that all the time?’” Shulman’s remark references one of his signature gambits: what he calls “dressing the set,” not only by moving furniture but by adding everyday objects and accessories. “I think he was trying to portray the lifestyle people might have had if they’d lived in those houses,” suggests the Los Angeles–based architectural photographer Tim Street-Porter. “He was doing—with a totally positive use of the words—advertising or propagandist photographs

for the cause.” This impulse culminated in Shulman’s introduction of people into his pictures—commonplace today, but virtually unique 50 years ago. “Those photographs—with young, attractive people having breakfast in glass rooms beside carports with two-tone cars—were remarkable in the history of architectural photography,” Street-Porter says. “He took that to a wonderfully high level.” Surprisingly, Shulman underplays this aspect of his oeuvre. The idea, he explains, is simply to “induce a feeling of occupancy. For example, in the Abidi house, I put some wineglasses and bottles on the counter, which would indicate that people are coming for dinner. Then there are times I’ll select two or three people—the owner of a house, or the children—and put them to work. Sometimes it’s called for.” “Are you pleased with these photographs?” I ask as he sets them aside. “I’m pleased with all my work,” he says cheerfully. “I tell people in my lectures, ‘If I were modest, I wouldn’t talk about how great I am.’” Yet when I ask how he devel-oped his eye, Shulman’s expression turns philosophical. “Sometimes Juergen walks ahead of me, and he’ll look for a composition. And invariably, he doesn’t see what I see. Architects don’t see what I see. It’s God-given,” he says, using the Yiddish word for an act of kindness—“a mitzvah.” I suggest a tour of the house, and Shulman moves carefully to

Architects don’t see what I see. It’s God-given,”

a rolling walker he calls “the Mercedes” and heads out of the studio and up the front steps. As a plaque beside the entrance indicates, the 3,000-square-foot, three-bedroom structure, which Shulman commissioned in 1948 and moved into two years later, was landmarked by L.A.’s Cultural Heritage Commission as the only steel-frame Soriano house that remains as built. Today, such Case Study–era residences are as fetishized (and expensive) as Fabergé eggs. But when Shulman opens the door onto a wide, cork-lined hallway leading to rooms that, after six decades, remain refreshing in their clarity of function and communication, use of simple, natural materials, and openness to the out-of-doors, I’m reminded that the movement’s motivation was egalitarian, not elitist: to produce welldesigned, affordable homes for young, middle-class families. “Most people whose houses I photographed didn’t use their sliding doors,” Shulman says, crossing the living room toward his own glass sliders. “Because flies and lizards would come in; there were strong winds. So I told Soriano I wanted a transition—a screened-in enclosure in front of the living room, kitchen, and bedroom to make an indoor/outdoor room.” Shulman opens the door leading to an exterior dining area. A bird trills loudly. “That’s a wren,” he says, and steps out. “My wife and I had most of our meals out here,” he recalls. “Beautiful.” We continue past the house to Shulman’s beloved garden—he calls it “the jungle”—a riot of vegetation that overwhelms much of the site, and frames an almost completely green canyon view. “I planted hundreds of trees and shrubs—back there you can see my redwoods,” he says, gesturing at the slope rising at the property’s rear. “Seedlings, as big as my thumb. They’re 85 feet tall now.” He pauses to consider an ominously large paw print in the path. “It’s too big for a dog. A bobcat wouldn’t be that big, either. It’s a mystery,” Shulman decides, pushing the Mercedes past a ficus as big as a baobab. The mystery I find myself pondering, as we walk beside the terraced hillside, is the one he cited himself: the source of his talent. In 1936, Shulman was an ama-teur photographer—gifted, but without professional ambition—when he was invited by an architect friend to visit Richard Neutra’s Kun House. Shulman, who’d never seen a modern residence, took a handful of snapshots with the Kodak vest-pocket camera his sister had given him, and sent copies to his friend as a thank-you. When Neutra saw the images, he requested a meeting, bought the photos, and asked the 26-year-old if he’d like more work. Shulman accepted and—virtually on a whim—his career took off. When I ask Shulman what Neutra saw in his images, he answers with a seemingly unrelated story. “I was born in Brooklyn in 1910,” says this child of Russian-Jewish immigrants. “When I was three, my father went to the town of

Central Village in Connecticut, and was shown this farmhouse—primitive, but [on] a big piece of land. After we moved in, he planted corn and potatoes, my mother milked the cows, and we had a farm life. “And for seven years, I was imbued with the pleasure of living close to nature. In 1920, when we came here to Los Angeles, I joined the Boy Scouts, and enjoyed the outdoor-living aspect, hiking and camping. My father opened a clothing store in Boyle Heights, and my four brothers and sisters and my mother worked in the store. They were businesspeople.” He flashes a slightly cocky smile. “I was with the Boy Scouts.” We arrive at a sitting area, with a small pool of water, a fireplace, and a large sculpture (purchased from one of his daughter’s high school friends) made from Volkswagen body parts. Shulman lowers himself onto a bench and absorbs the abundant natural pleasures. “When I bought this land, my brother said, ‘Why don’t you subdivide? You’ll make money.’” He looks amused. “Two acres at the top of Laurel Canyon, and the studio could be converted into a guest house—it could be sold for millions.” He resumes his story. “At the end of February 1936, I’d been at UCLA, and then Berkeley, for seven years. Never graduated, never majored. Just audited classes. I was driving home from Berkeley”—Shulman hesitates dramatically—“and I knew I could do anything. I was even thinking of getting a job in the parks department raking leaves, just so I could be outside. And within two weeks, I met Neutra, by chance. March 5, 1936—that day, I became a photographer. Why not?” Hearing this remarkable tale, I understand that Shulman has answered my question about his talent with an explanation of his nature. What Neutra perceived in the young amateur was an outdoorsman’s independent spirit and an enthusiasm for life’s possi-bilities, qualities that, as fate would have it, merged precisely with the boundless optimism of the American Century— an optimism, Shulman instinctively recognized, that was embodied in the modern houses that became, as Street-Porter says, “a muse to him.” “[Shulman] always says proudly that Soriano hated his furniture,” says Wim de Wit, the Getty Research Institute curator who oversees Shulman’s collection. “He says, ‘I don’t care; when I sit in a chair I want to be comfortable.’ He does not think of himself as an artist. ‘I was doing a business,’ he says. But when you look at that overgrown garden, you know—there is some other streak in him.” That streak—the free soul within the unpretentious, practical product of the immigrant experience—produced what Nogai calls “a seldom personality”: a Jewish farm boy who grew up to create internationally recognized American cultural artifacts—icons that continue to influ-ence our fantasies and self-perceptions. I ask Shulman if he’s surprised at how well his life has turned out. “I tell students, ‘Don’t take life too seriously—don’t plan nothing nohow,’” he replies. “But I have always observed and respected my destiny. That’s the only way I can describe it. It was meant to be.” “And it was a destiny that suited you?” At this, everything rises at once—his eyebrows, his outstretched arms, and his peaceful, satisfied smile. “Well,” says Shulman, “here I am.”

Building with a Twist By Christopher Hawthorne

Photographed by Alden Walters

The Frank Gehry designed Disney Hall is a mass of reflections and curious angles

ith its exuberant, swooping facade, Frank Gehryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newest building, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, looks anything but old-fashioned. And yet in at least one way, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an architectural throwback. In an era when office parks, suburban developments, and even skyscrapers seem to zoom to completion in a matter of months, the $274 million hall, which opens Oct. 23 with three nights of inaugural performances by the L.A. Philharmonic, recalls the days when significant public buildings sometimes took decades to finish.

It wasn’t planned that way, of course. The project had its start back in 1987, with a $50 million gift from Walt Disney’s widow, Lillian. Working with a Japanese acoustician named Yasuhisa Toyota, Gehry quickly produced some very promising preliminary designs. The building seemed destined to be not just Gehry’s most important in Southern California, where he’s lived for nearly 60 of his 74 years, but among the most important of his career. Advertisement Then, in the mid-1990s, a ballooning budget, fund-raising troubles, and other problems stalled the project. It wasn’t revived until 1997, when it received a new infusion of cash from the Disney family and others. That year saw the opening of Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which turned Gehry into a world-famous “starchitect,” doing exactly for his reputation what Disney Hall was supposed to. And indeed the two buildings have a lot in common: Both are composed of a jumble of organic forms sheathed in gleaming, windowless metal panels. (In Spain the material is titanium. In Los Angeles the facade was originally going to be limestone, but budget cutbacks or seismic worries, depending on which story you believe, forced Gehry to go with panels of brushed stainless steel.)

Frank Gehry Frank Gehry was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg in Toronto, Canada. He moved with his family to Los Angeles as a teenager in 1947 and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. His father changed the familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name to Gehry when the family immigrated. Ephraim adopted the first name Frank in his 20s; since then he has signed his name Frank O. Gehry. Uncertain of his career direction, the teenage Gehry drove a delivery truck to support himself while taking a variety of courses at Los Angeles City College. He took his first architecture courses on a hunch, and became enthralled with the possibilities of the art, although at first he found himself hampered by his relative lack of skill as a draftsman. Sympathetic teachers and an early encounter with modernist architect Raphael Soriano confirmed his career choice. He won scholarships to the University of Southern California and graduated in 1954 with a degree in architecture. Los Angeles was in the middle of a post-war housing boom and the work of pioneering modernists like Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler were an exciting part of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s architectural scene. Gehry went to work full-time for the notable Los Angeles firm of Victor Gruen Associates, where he had apprenticed as a student, but his work at Gruen was soon interrupted by compulsory military service. After serving for a year in the United States Army, Gehry entered the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he studied city planning, but he returned to Los Angeles without completing a graduate degree. He briefly joined the firm of Pereira and Luckman before returning to Victor Gruen. Gruen Associates were highly successful practitioners of the severe utilitarian style of the period, but Gehry was restless. He took his wife and two children to Paris, where he spent a year working in the office of the French architect Andre Remondet and studied firsthand the work of the pioneer modernist Le Corbusier.

“…a sensational place to hear music... In richness of sound, it has few rivals on the international scene, and in terms of visual drama it may have no rival at all.” -The Newyorker Is the long-delayed Disney Hall, then, just a consolation prize for Los Angeles? Does one of the biggest cities in the world find itself in the odd position of playing second fiddle to a Basque regional capital with a population under 400,000? Not exactly. The building is a fantastic piece of architecture—assured and vibrant and worth waiting for. It has its own personality, instead of being anything close to a Bilbao rehash.

Even though it cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars and covers 293,000 square feet, Disney Hall is a tighter, more focused effort than many of those Gehry has produced after Bilbao, when the commissions came rolling in, his budgets suddenly became freer, and he found himself with clients perhaps less likely to challenge his authority. The hall manages to be at once lean and wildly expressionistic. It looks like a building in which every design decision has gone through two layers of scrutiny: one financial, the other aesthetic. Gehry had many years to tweak the project, and he’s managed to polish it without sacrificing any of its vitality. Like a lot of Gehry’s work, the new building relates remarkably well to the city, though the visual fireworks of its facade and its plush interior spaces may well distract a lot of people from

And surprisingly enough, it turns out that all of those postponements and budget battles have been a boon for the hall’s design. What the finished product makes most clear is that like plenty of artists, Frank Gehry tends to work better with restrictions, whether they’re physical, financial, or spatial. Without them, his work tends to sprawl not just figuratively but literally.

this fact. It occupies a full city block at the top of Bunker Hill, across the street from Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a gilded latemodernist mistake that used to house both the Philharmonic and the Academy Awards and today hosts neither. (The Oscars are now handed out at the new David Rockwell-designed Kodak Theater, a few miles away.) The facade soars, bends, and dives in a number of directions, in typical Gehry fashion, but that movement is always checked by the limits of the city grid. Seen from above, the building looks like a bunch of flowers contained, barely, within a perfectly rectangular flower box. Indeed, that tension—between free-flowing imagination and the limits imposed by physics and budgets—is what defines the building as a whole. That tension continues inside. There is a small performance and lecture space, for example, that Gehry created simply by stretching out one rounded corner of the huge lobby until it was big enough to operate as a quasi-separate room. It’s a setting for chamber music and pre-concert lectures that didn’t require any new walls or floors or even a stage. It makes something remarkable out of nothing. Other details in the lobby, from the walls lined in Douglas fir to the remarkable treelike columns (whose stocky, branching

“This view is shared by more than one million listeners who experience live performances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic each year.”

form Gehry says he stole from the Czech architect Joze Plecnik), promote a dreamlike and otherworldly feel, a detachment from the hustle-bustle and the grime of the city. But the lobby is also open to everybody: You don’t need a ticket to walk through it, as is the case in many concert halls. This is an old-school public space in the tradition of Grand Central Terminal or Bertram Goodhue’s low-slung central branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, which is only a few blocks away from the new hall.

There is still more productive tension inside the auditorium itself, which holds about 2,200 people and during daytime performances will be naturally lit by mostly hidden skylights and one tall window. The free-flowing, organic forms that Gehry loves to use are offset by the rigorous acoustic demands

that any architect of a concert hall has to contend with. (In an auditorium of this kind, every exposed surface, from balcony railings to seat upholstery, can affect how the orchestra sounds.) As it turns out, Frank Gehry and concert halls are well-matched. Acousticians have realized over the last few decades that convex—or outwardly bulging—curves can be very effective, bouncing and dispersing sound waves produced by an orchestra. (Concave curves, on the other hand, can trap sound.) And in buildings from Paris to Seattle, Gehry has produced what easily qualifies as architecture’s most varied and complete collection of convex curves. There’s no definitive word yet on whether Disney Hall’s acoustics are indeed good; the orchestra’s first performance is still a few days away. But the early word from the musicians, who began rehearsing in the new auditorium over the summer, has been positive.

same time preserving the sense of refuge that will always be classical music’s main drawing card. Gehry’s design cleverly explores both sides of that divide: It is a building where the members of a democracy can go to feel refined, to be lifted from the everyday. Gehry, along with a few of his more admiring critics, likes to define himself as a combination of artist and architect. That job description suggests that he envies the kind of pure creation that painters and sculptors can indulge in, distant from the demands of zoning boards, engineers, and French horn players. But in fact the Disney Concert Hall seems to make the opposite case about his talents. It’s full of evidence that Gehry is an architect in the most public-minded and collaborative senses of the word—that he’s a master at figuring out ways to allow inspiration to serve practicality, and vice versa.

All of these dualities are fitting for a concert hall. An attraction of going to the symphony is trading in your regular self for a better-dressed, more cultured one. Symphony orchestras these days are looking for ways to attract younger, hipper audiences as their core supporters grow older, while at the

Last Glance W

ell it has been a wonderful first issue. here at Glance we appreciate your looks and hope that when you pick up our magazine that you take that second glance to not look but to really see all that we have to offer. we thrive on your glimpses, flip throughs, peeks, and ganders but we hope that you at the very least will really feel what we are giving you. here at Glance we will promise to give you our best with every issue and it is up to you to do more than Glance at us.