architecture: the door to well-being and beauty Christina Grattan
T
he morning was frigid. I stood in Pershing Square, about to depart on a historical walking tour of Los Angeles’ architecture. Initially, I viewed the tour as a leisurely way to pass the time over a weekend. Yet, I soon discovered a more profound truth that loomed within the city and its built environment that gave meaning to this tour. I looked upon a city tyrannized by modern rectangular high rises filled with black mirror-like one-dimensional glass windows. I sought to find life and joy, but I found myself in an urban wasteland. My eyes fixated on the former City National Bank building, a modern international style high rise. It was practically a tall white rectangular box decked with small windows and white
overhangings that regarded humans as only cogs in a machine. Other edifices strove for the futuristic space-age, where translucent turquoise solitary structures boasted of progress and technology sacrificing human individuality for an automaton-like existence. Amidst such monoliths, devoid of humanness, I realised how small and powerless I was. The mere realisation deprived me of a sense of wholeness and belonging. In a long tradition, facades were built for beauty, whereas now only for utility. I was perplexed by what went wrong. During the tour, I wished that my sense of unease and confinement produced by such a spiritless and desolate cityscape would perish.
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