Bawdy Double

project: L.A. Forum “Liner” Competition

date: 2007

scale: Interior/Facade

status: Second Place

design: Ramiro Diaz-Granados,  Heather Flood

 

 

 

The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design and its new home on Hollywood Boulevard occupy two points of a cultural horizon within the city.   Both are centers for creative talent where ideas get generated, work gets shown, and new voices emerge.   However, the bawdily atmosphere of Hollywood rarely finds its way into the high-minded initiatives of architectural culture.   It’s easier to score a bong than a book on the Boulevard.  Within this ecology of sex shops, tourist traps, night clubs, and pizza joints is an undercurrent of promiscuity that favors the development of cultural taboos.   While the urban mix of Hollywood Boulevard produces a rich underbelly of creative expression, the Forum creates discussion and debate in a learned environment.  Both are thriving centers with distinctly different means for producing similar results.  In order to capitalize on the intrinsic vitality of each, our proposal employs the tactics of burlesque to contaminate architectural culture with the bawdy and Hollywood Boulevard with the refined and to reinforce the street as an oasis of parading looky-loos.

The project consists of two primary elements, one internal and one external. Inside a new wall liner tightly adheres to the existing party walls and becomes turbulent as it bends around the front entrance. This turbulent activity translates into voluptuous, ruffled, and cinched surfaces that contribute to the Forum’s street presence while also concealing the deeper interior. It also houses basic programmatic features such as a reception cave, coat draping, and bar counter. Outside a gauzy façade of lacy framework is clipped on to the existing and runs from sidewalk to parapet. Both elements meet at an orifice that offers a peepshow for the street voyeur.