Page 5 of 5
Garden Grove, California
And the girls on the bus kept on laughing at us as we drove on the 10 down to Venice again
Still in Orange County, on South Lewis Street among the warehouses and across from the Arco station is the Crystal Cathedral, where too much glass is (apparently) not a problem. Home to no fewer than two Reverend Robert Schullers, it is home to an organization of whom I know truly little about- although I imagine that they're evil since they openly affiliate themselves with "Doctor" Laura Schlessinger on their internet site.
The Crystal Cathedral was designed in the late 1970s by (possible vampire) Philip Johnson and the other guy at the time (John Burgee). It predates the 1979 design for the AT&T Building by only a few years, a last gasp before Johnson had truly embraced all that surface post modernism. Outside on the left is a glimpse of the bell tower Johnson designed in the late 1980s, after turning away from all that surface post modernism and sucking on some of that refreshing new, "deconstructivist" young blood.
Besides Johnson and Burgee (and an older complex by Richard Neutra), the Schullers have kept their architectural edge by hiring Richard Meier to design their "International Center for Possibility Thinking," a place I am imagining to be a brainwashing center. The building is a typical, soulless, competent Meier building, as seen twice below on the cathedral walls.
Despite all of the unabashed modernism in the buildings, the campus is populated by truly bad religious sculpture, almost the quality of what you would expect to see in a dollar store nativity scene, only much bigger. My favorite is below, the one outside the Neutra complex of Moses, the ten commandments and a gas powered, eternally burning concrete bush.
At the foot of Santa Monica Boulevard is the start of the Santa Monica Pier, a parking lot with some amusement park rides and a slightly closer view of the Pacific.
If you walk a good hour or so south along the ocean, past all of the freaks while avoiding the temptation to swim out past the breakers and watch the world die, you'll eventually end up in the nicer part of Venice, home to homes and interesting ones at that. This is a house designed by Antoine Predock, a rare example of his work outside the Mountain Time Zone.
Frank Gehry lives (along with the fictional characters of Three’s Company and those possibly less fictional Baywatch people) in Santa Monica, on a quiet street in a house covered over with chain link fence). Throughout Santa Monica and neighboring Venice are pieces of his pre-Bilbao (and pre-Disney Concert Hall) work. There is Santa Monica Place- a shopping mall covered in chain link fence; an interesting little strip mall on Main Street; the world famous Chiat Day building and this house, only a half block away from the Antoine Predock house. This was back when Frank was fun and not as expected (or popular) as today, when he was hired by cheap clients who realized good design didn't have to always be so damn expensive.
This is his famous house for a screenwriter who used to be a lifeguard, complete with its little writing room that blocks all the good views for the rest of the house.
As promised, Frank Gehry's most well known building on Main Street is the (former) Chiat-Day Building. At its centerpiece are those damn giant binoculars, something which would be a blatant Claes Oldenburg rip off except it was actually designed by Claes. Frank and Claes had a fruitful collaboration for many years, one that seems to be fading as Claes (at 75 years old) moves closer to death and Frank (at 75 years old) gets more and more famous.
One last picture. As good an image to end with as any, looking north past this faithless town, past its trees, its mountains, its haze...