“Today, Los Angeles is to New York what New York was to Paris in the 1950s,” said Perry Rubenstein, the latest Manhattan art dealer to recognize LA’s concentration of creativity and open a satellite there.
What makes this urban experimentation so exciting for architects as well as the art world is clients’ passion for collaboration and excellence—rare qualities in a city where much new construction opts for expediency. Regen Projects owner Shaun Regen spent years searching for the ideal space in which to consolidate her activities. “When I first met Michael Maltzan about this project, the criteria were very simple: great proportions, beautiful light, and flexible space,” Regan recalled. She settled on Hollywood for its urbanity, history, and the opportunity to have a roof terrace overlooking the hills and city. Maltzan shared her enthusiasm.
Yantrasast pursued a similar course in
Young LA gallerist Samuel Freeman recently relocated from Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station Arts Center to Culver City, two blocks from Blum & Poe. (After first moving to the neighborhood in 2003, Blum & Poe assumed new quarters in 2009, designed by California-based Escher GuneWardena Architecture.) Warren Wagner of W3 Architects exploited the trapezoidal corner site to create exhibition spaces of varied sizes, each with glass sliders that open to an inner courtyard. He clad the exterior in white stucco and cold-rolled steel. Each gallery is ideally proportioned, and clerestories and skylights pull in natural light from different directions, giving the rooms a residential quality.
Meanwhile, the world’s most successful gallerist has returned to his roots. Larry Gagosian, who went from selling posters in Los Angeles’ Westwood neighborhood to running a global empire, recently commissioned Michael Palladino, a Los Angeles design partner of Richard Meier + Partners, to extend the Beverly Hills gallery his firm designed in 1995. With the addition seamlessly joined on the street facade, the building bears a new interior incorporating a bow-truss ceiling vault flanked by skylights. These forms, in turn, play off the upturned curve of the original structure, complementing its ethereal precision with simpler, earthier forms.
