Architects

On this city's western edge, Richard Meier, a New York modernist architect, recently unveiled his latest creation, a gleaming white corporate headquarters building on the banks of the Seine. Meanwhile, in Bercy, on Paris' eastern edge, Los Angeles avant-garde architect Frank Gehry broke ground last year on a whimsical, new American arts and cultural facility that will be finished in 1993.

You can draw a straight line, in terms of architectural history, from William Randolph Hearst'ssprawling estate in San Simeon to the corner of Broadway and 11th Street in downtown Los Angeles. It was at that downtown site in 1913 that Hearst commissioned architect Julia Morgan to design a headquarters for his Los Angeles Examiner newspaper, which he'd founded in 1903. Morgan produced one of the most remarkable designs of her prolific career, a 103,500-square-foot Mission Revival building draped with Italian and Moorish touches, including domes covered in yellow and blue tile.

Hansel and Gretel architecture may be a public menace in some quarters, but in this town it's a cultural treasure. We speak here of the Petersen Studio Court, a.k.a. Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 552. This sweetly wacky 1921 enclave of storybook cottages wedged between a thrift shop and a Korean restaurant on Beverly Boulevard is no mere representative sample. It's an early forerunner of the 1920s fairy tale buildings scattered throughout L.A.

Architects from some of the most prominent firms in the world -- including Renzo Piano and UN Studio's Ben Van Berkel -- joined a long list of well-known local designers Wednesday in presenting hugely ambitious if  largely fanciful plans for expanding Los Angeles' Union Station. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which now owns the station and a 40-acre parcel of land surrounding it, plans to choose a single team of designers as the master planner for the station site by late June.

After a modest uptick in December, the nation's architects reported a drop in business last month to a historic low. Architectural contracts are a leading indicator of construction activity, with a lag time of about nine months to a year between the awarding of architectural contracts and construction spending.

Architecture, arguably for the first time in its history, found itself at the very center of American cultural and political life in the decade that is wrapping up. That centrality helped make stars out of architecture's top talents. With the aid of powerful software, adventuresome clients and, not least, a flood of new wealth and easy financing, it also produced a rush of inventive buildings, in styles stretching from fluid to wildly sculptural to neomodern. But the notion that architects had suddenly acquired more power than ever before, as opposed to more visibility, opportunity or cachet, turned out to be hollow.

The nation's architects reported a slight improvement in business in November, the first uptick in four months. Architectural contracts are a leading indicator of construction activity, with a lag time of about nine months to a year between the awarding of the contracts and construction spending. The American Institute of Architects, the leading trade group for the profession, said that its index of “work on the boards” reported by architects was 52, following a score of 49.4 in October.

Frank Gehry was on the panel. So was Thom Mayne. And fellow architects Eric Owen Moss, Peter Cook, Hernan Diaz Alonso and Greg Lynn. The subject was the "troubled relationship" between architecture and beauty. The setting, on a warm recent evening, was an outdoor pavilion in the main parking lot at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, where Moss is director. The impresario, moderator and ego-wrangler was architect Yael Reisner, Cook's wife and the author of a new book of interviews with architects on beauty.

Saul M. Salka's letter (July 6) suggesting "constructive changes" to the Braude/Yaroslavsky density initiative reveals a lack of understanding of the initiative and its goal of restricting and limiting destructive impact of excessive commercial development in primarily residential areas. His letter was a mishmash of bad arithmetic, misinformation and confusion on the initiative process. Very few architects will agree with Salka's assertion that "the most gifted architects might find it impossible to design a building" if the initiative passes.

The creative department of the real estate business has lost its swagger. Architects, the exalted artists who design structures that will stand for generations, are feeling a lot less glamorous these days. As the recession emptied offices, stores and factories, the demand for new ones disappeared. Work for architects also went away. When people look back, there will be few signature buildings on the country's metropolitan skylines to point to that were built in the years around 2010, said Kermit Baker, chief economist for the American Institute of Architects.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe receives an homage in today's Google Doodle. The German-born modernist architect would have turned 126 today. The doodle -- a drawing of a rectangular glass and steel structure with the word Google just barely visible imprinted on the building -- is based on S.R. Crown Hall  in Chicago, one of Mies' most celebrated structures. The building houses the Illinois Institute of Technology's College of Architecture and was completed in 1956, when Mies served as the head of the architectural department of the school, then called the Armour Institute of Technology.

The Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and a civil rights law firm have filed a joint complaint against the city of Lomita for denying the Islamic Center of South Bay's application to build a new mosque.‬ ‪The federal complaint, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles, contends that the city is discriminating against the center and that there is no evidence to back up neighbors' concerns about...

For three years, the New Orleans Saints secretly doled out cash rewards to players for hits on opponents — $1,500 for knocking someone out of the game, $1,000 for getting a player carted off the field. On Wednesday, the league landed its own knockout blow, suspending the Saints' coach without pay for a year and meting out suspensions to their general manager and two other coaches. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, in going further than any previous commissioner, sent a clear message to professional football: The league is getting more violent and bounties won't be tolerated.

On a cold and gray recent Sunday afternoon, a standing room crowd of more than 100 residents packed the community center of this small seaside city to observe an unusual job interview. Five architects made presentations to a design jury, hoping for a chance to design a replacement for the local middle school, heavily damaged a year ago by the earthquake and tsunami that killed an estimated 19,000 people, including at least 58 here, and destroyed more than 120,000 buildings. Kumiko Inui, a 42-year-old rising star of the Tokyo architecture scene, ultimately won the competition with an impressive design featuring tall glass-wrapped classroom wings paired with smaller wooden pavilions in a lush tree-covered landscape.

Set on a ridge in the Hollywood Hills, the Michael Gantert Residence takes full advantage of its dramatic viewpoint. The cantilevered steel-and-glass house, built in the early '80s, was one of the last designed by Case Study architect Pierre Koenig. Location: 6431 La Punta Drive, Los Angeles 90068 Asking price: $1.895 million Previously sold: In 2005 for $1.63 million Architect: Pierre Koenig House size: Three bedrooms, 21/2 bathrooms, 1,994 square feet Lot size: 7,400 square feet Features: Open-plan living, dining and kitchen area, floor-to-ceiling windows, laundry room, three-space carport, gated road About the area: Last year, 259 existing single-family homes sold in the 90068 ZIP Code at a median price of $850,000, according to DataQuick.

When firefighters arrived at the $11-million mansion in the Hollywood Hills last year, they thought they had a chance to save the 13,500-square-foot structure. More than 80 firefighters raced to the home, and 19 were temporarily trapped as the fire spread. Veteran firefighter Glenn Allen was on the ground floor when several hundred pounds of plaster and lumber fell on him. His colleagues dug him out using chainsaws to cut through the debris, but his injuries were so severe that he died two days later.

The American Institute of Architects' California Council will give its president's award to the San Fernando Valley chapter in honor of its all-volunteer Urban Design Assistance Team, which created a plan to transform Panorama City into a commercial, residential and cultural hub.

I am writing in response to the item March 6 on the dedication of St. Bernardine Library at St. Thomas Aquinas College. As an architect and president of the American Institute of Architects, Ventura County chapter, I am discouraged to find that the architect for the featured project was not mentioned. Architects are trained professionals who work to shape and enhance the quality of the built environment and can serve as a resource for educating the public. Their creative skills produce safe and enjoyable buildings in which we work and live.

Modernist architect Eugene Weston III was in his early 30s when he declared that "the house is the last of the handcrafted objects" in an industrial age. The year was 1956, and he argued in The Times that even a modest house could be "more beautiful and meaningful" if it was built with post-and-beam construction that opens up interiors and invites the outdoors in through walls of glass. A third-generation Los Angeles architect, Weston built a string of midcentury homes here before spending three decades with a San Diego firm known for such large-scale commissions as the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego Wild Animal Park and several major buildings at UC San Diego.

Norma Merrick Sklarek, the first African American woman in the country to become a licensed architect, who helped produce Terminal 1 at Los Angeles International Airport and the American Embassy in Tokyo, died Monday at her home in Pacific Palisades. She was 85. The cause was heart failure, said her son, David Merrick Fairweather. Sklarek broke barriers from the beginning of her career when she passed the New York state exam in 1954 to become the first African American woman to earn an architect's license.