![]() It almost seems as if the architect wished to make the museum embody a religious ritual.” From the street, these stairs are hardly apparent. ![]() The public galleries are approached down a flight of stairs that lead into the south pavilion. “Nevertheless,” Gebhard and Winter continue, “the layout of the museum seems a bit strange. In the 2003 edition of the Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles, David Gebhard and Robert Winter called MOCA “unquestionably one of the most beautiful buildings erected in Los Angeles during the past four or five decades.” commission outside of Japan-have appeared alongside critiques of its performance.Ĭonstruction on MOCA’s pyramids, which were designed to filter California’s sunshine into the underground galleries. That sentiment accurately describes MOCA, where, for decades, celebrations of Isozaki’s design-his first U.S. Hawthorne is now overseeing an effort to create a database of LA structures from the postmodern era, “many of which were difficult to appreciate even when they were new because they sought to challenge traditional notions of beauty or architectural context.” Today, MOCA’s architect Arata Isozaki was named as the winner of the 2019 Pritzker Prize, which may cement his LA legacy as the slow-burning catalyst of a cultural corridor that’s finally coming to life.Īs noted by Christopher Hawthorne, the former Los Angeles Times architecture critic who is now serving as the city’s chief design officer, the award might also bolster arguments to preserve MOCA’s “fascinating, underappreciated, but also deeply flawed building.”īecause it was opened in 1987, MOCA is not included in Survey LA, the citywide initiative to locate and protect historic or significant landmarks built before 1980. ![]() It can be easy to overlook the role that MOCA’s red sandstone fortress, embedded deep in Bunker Hill, played in wooing a wave of contemporary architecture like Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Broad Museum to Downtown Los Angeles. ![]()
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