Ricardo Legorreta dies at 80; Mexican modernist architect

Ricardo Legorreta incorporated elements of Mexican vernacular architecture into modern design and found a global audience. He redesigned Los Angeles' Pershing Square in 1993.

January 08, 2012|By Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times

That victory was perhaps a more significant moment in the cultural history of Los Angeles than in Legorreta's own career. His scheme, a collaboration with the landscape architect Laurie Olin anchored by a 10-story purple bell tower, has been harshly criticized over the years, largely because it exacerbates the plaza's detachment from the city around it.

At the same time, Legorreta's design, according to the author William Alexander McClung, emerged "as a hopeful symbol of Mexican-Anglo cultural interdependence, thus explicitly conceding the end of Anglo hegemony" in Los Angeles.

As his fame and commissions grew, so did opposition to the sharp colors that had become his trademark. In the mid-1980s, Legorreta was hired by the Irvine Co. to design a $90-million shopping center in Tustin. His design featured purple walls, but complaints from residents and the Tustin mayor prompted the developer to repaint them in a more conservative reddish-brown shade.

Information on survivors was unavailable.

christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com

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