I did not intend on becoming an architect when I came to Los Angeles.
My interest in architecture grew out of living in Los Angeles and in
its contrast to places I had left. I love the city. I like coming home.
Pleasure washes across me even as I descend by plane into the dirty
soup bowl of air in the summers. And when I drive the elevated 105/110
interchange home from the airport, able to see the banal longview of
modest south Los Angeles neighborhoods. I love taking the train through
the backyards of neighborhoods that skirt Los Angeles proper, by the
river, through industrial wild lands. I even like driving in on the 10,
reaching that low point where the road spaghettis into LA’s freeway
choices with the view of downtown emerging between the constructed
grounds. I am glad to return from moist green mountains, places with sap
smelling air, Joshua Tree, Paris, or Mexico. It’s nice to leave and
it’s nice to come back.
Why do I like Los Angeles, why
is it home. That is not easily defined. People say Los Angeles is not a
pretty city and not a real city. To the first I would not argue and to
the second I do not know. Does what Los Angeles is not, matter? It is
a cliche to say that instead of the city defining its constituents, the
constituents define the city. It is true of Los Angeles. It’s a
malleable city, its dominated by low rise stucco construction that is
easily transformed by paint and signage and so is reborn in character by
every new business, every new owner.; The gentrification organism
operates here at a voracious and predicable rate. We have very few
aesthetic regulations and a history and climate that support the
reflection of personal fantasy. There are distinctive characteristics of
the city, but one of them is that the urban fabric is dominated by the
non-distinct and undefined. I acknowledge its substance and its
spectacles. But most of my living takes place the against the backdrop
of Navajo white painted apartments and bungalows, production spaces in
stripped out storefronts and warehouses, sidewalks, streets, and parking
lots. I am interested in the particular kind of city that is Los
Angeles, in exploring the character and shape of a city in its
relationships.
In those dazed moments at stop-lights, its possible to be a stranger to yourself…For at moments like this, the city goes soft; it awaits the imprint of an identity. For better or worse it invites you to remake it, to consolidate it into a shape you can live in. You, too. Decide who you are, and the city will again assume a fixed form around you. Decide what it is, and your own identity will be revealed, like a position on a map fixed by triangulation. Cities, unlike villages and small towns, are plastic by nature.
Excerpt form The Soft City, Jonathan Rabin
This
writing is an exercise of ideas and observations foremost on Los
Angeles, on Los Angelinos, on aesthetics, on urbanism. I hope to find
out what more it will be in the process. At its best, I hope to
communicate.