Thinking about the architecture of Los Angeles conjures an image of sunlit Californian Modern style architecture, microcosms of Mad Men-style families, and lightweight steel structures that promise new ways of living. However, with a growing homeless population exceeding that of most mid-sized American cities, Los Angeles remains far from the middle-class mid-century ideal. No one knows this better than architect Michael Maltzan. Practicing in Los Angeles, he builds single-family residences on the desirable Pacific coast hillside and also iconic housing schemes for the homeless. But can his architecture actually bring change and improvement to the issues that surround homelessness? The following is a conversation about post-crisis America, (social) responsibilities in architecture, and the challenges of building in a city like Los Angeles.
–Michael, you grew up in Levittown – America’s most famous postwar suburban development – does Los Angeles, with its suburban character give you a sense of home? Yes, it does. I felt very familiar with Los Angeles and its characteristics from the very first time I ever came here. In fact it is the city I have felt most comfortable with, which has to do with having grown up in a similar type of postwar suburb. I appreciate having grown up in a suburb.
–How has that influenced your work as an architect? I believe that the social and civic qualities of a place like Levittown exist in a much more real way than most people give it credit for. Those early experiences
have allowed me not to dismiss cities that are marked by a sense of sprawl, incredible scale, and multiple centers like Los Angeles is. People often disregard them because they don’t look like traditional cities, or like what people think a city should be.
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You moved to Los Angeles in the 1990s, founding your office here in 1995. You have only a few projects abroad, mainly building in California. Is there a connection between your work and the legacy of Californian Modernism?
Los Angeles is potentially the city worldwide that has had the most continuous project of modernism. Globally the city is seen as a great laboratory for modern architecture, and there is indeed a certain culture of experimentation here. I think that my work has a relationship to this long tradition of experimentation in modernism.
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For many people, Los Angeles means Hollywood stars and plastic surgery, glamour and superficiality. What do you think? What makes this city?
Democracy is one of the major things connecting Los Angeles to the American context. It is like democracy in a physical form: it has messy and complicated places, it is sprawling and has no clearly defined edges. Yet at the same time it has an enormous energy; it is very vital and evolves continuously. That makes it challenging to work here. There are so many influences, so many different cultures, ideas, and attitudes. As an architect in this city it is very difficult to develop one specialty and expect that to be useful and continue working. You need to be very elastic in your approach.
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Speaking of elasticity: You are currently working on the 6th Street Viaduct, which will be a spectacular horizontal structure
and a major contribution to the Los Angeles cityscape. What do you hope your design will add to the city?
L.A. is a giant infrastructure – the railroads, power lines, water supplies, and the highways are our equivalents of the major icons such as buildings or monuments in other cities. The 6th Street Viaduct is an opportunity to re-imagine what infrastructure can be. The highways, for example, allow you only one thing: to get from one place to another. But at the same time they cut through the urban fabric, cutting off communities from each other. The 6th Street Viaduct will be a redefinition of what a piece of infrastructure can be in the twenty-first century. At its core, this bridge will cross the river. But at the same, time it will weave together the different communities it crosses. In contrast to all the other infrastructures, it will take on multiple responsibilities.
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»I appreciate having grown up in a suburb.«
»L.A. is like democracy in a physical form: it has messy and complicated places, it is sprawling and has no clearly defined edges. Yet at the same time it has an enormous energy; it is very vital and evolves continuously.«
Will the 6th Street Viaduct become for Los Angeles what the High Line is for New York City?
The High Line is a great example of the reuse of an existing piece of infrastructure. The 6th Street bridge is a completely new bridge, but it is meant as an iconic structure just as the High Line in New York or the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The Viaduct will also be an observatory where you get a unique view of the city. In that regard it is similar to the High Line, which allows people to see their city in a very different way.
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The global financial and economic crisis led to a kind of urban crisis (dispossessed housing, abandoned construction sites and properties). In what way has American architecture changed after the crisis in 2008?
I think we are still waiting to see that. Each of the previous significant economic downturns did in fact change the way that architecture,
urbanism, and landscape architecture continued to develop. There is no doubt that it will have an effect. Most profoundly it will be felt by younger generations who are now starting their careers. It is likely that the real effects will not be visible for a few years. But I hope that these effects will be significant. A downturn is only useful if there are new things that come out of it, new ways of approaching our urban or built environments and our ecological environments. I hope that in this time people will continue to find ways to experiment with ideas that we will begin to see put into practice over the next decade. One of the potential dangers of the 2008 crisis is that the discipline may becomee marginalized. The first thing is for architecture to continue to be visible and engaged in the future of our cities. The challenge is to not shrink from that responsibility even when it is difficult to survive as an architect.
–Has the economic downturn influenced your work?
It is impossible for the downturn not to have an effect in some way. But from the very beginning I was trying to make my practice elastic. We worked with a number of different project types: smaller projects, lower cost projects, prefabricated multifamily housing projects, and urban infill projects. These are all building types that are more prominent right now.
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With the Star Apartments you are currently building your third residential project for homeless people in Los Angeles. Is this a strategy to avoid the crisis, to build for the growing number of homeless people?
Someone could try to make that argument. However, we have been working on what people call “socially motivated” projects long before they became a prominent topic in the world during the economic changes in 2008. The first project I did was a project called Inner City Art (ICA), a school specifically targeting the enormous population in Downtown LA that had been denied educational
Michael Maltzan, FAIA, is the founder and principal of Michael Maltzan Architecture. Founded in 1995 and based in Los Angeles, Michael Maltzan Architecture is committed to the design and construction of projects that engage their context and community through a concentrated exploration of movement and perception. The practice’s intensely collaborative studio culture is focused on developing partnerships across disciplines to integrate sustainability and architectural form.
privileges. We have been working on similar projects with the Skid Row Housing Trust (SRHT) since 1995. Our very first residential project with them actually happened in 2006 during the most intense part of the building boom. The past years have shed light on the social and political problems in Los Angeles, but the issues existed long before the 2008 crash. I don’t separate our work between the work we do on Skid Row and from other more socially and economically stable institutions. We are doing a full range of work, in good times and in bad times.
–The creation of change through architecture is part of your philosophy. But aren’t the cooperation with the SRHT and the building of homes for the homeless somehow more palliative measures rather an actual means to fight the causes of homelessness?That is a very charged question. The work of the SRHT, with its growing success, has become more present and visible in the city. The scope of their work has expanded and that includes advocacy for the homeless at a social and political level. But the problems of homelessness are not going be solved by one organization. They are certainly not going to be solved by architecture. That is an issue for all of us, as citizens, to deal with at the highest level of society. There are ways in which both the SRHT and even the architecture that I have been involved in designing can make the existing situation better. We can point to other possible solutions and change the dynamic of homelessness in the city. One of the goals of our buildings is to make the communities living in them more visible, so that they are not relegated to anonymity and pushed off to the side. We want to create a strong iconic presence in the city in a powerful and positive way, to make sure that the city as a whole understands that there is a community of formerly-homeless people living there.
»The problems of homelessness are certainly not going be solved by architecture. That is an issue for all of us, as citizens.«
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