Bawdy Double

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 bawdy 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 are 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.   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.