The Ugliest Architecture in Southern California - Part 3: South Los Angeles

by Tony Chavira

1. The Newton Community Police Station on South Central Avenue

As with a supermarket, an outdoor mall, or the DMV, I tend to think that the design of a police station dictates how it will be treated in the community. The Hollenbeck District station is one with the community, surrounded by taco joints and small East L.A. businesses (including HomeBoy Industries and HomeGirl Cafe). The new Olympic Division building is open, artistic, and infused into the community in a creative way. So really it’s a question of taste: how should a police station look to your community? Should it be open, immersive and inviting? Should it be dark, dank and gritty? Should it be imposing, callous and intimidating? Should a police station on Main and Spring look any different than a police station in South Central?

Regardless of how things should be, the Newton Community Police Station on south Central Avenue is a flat, gray building with flat gray walls overlooking the flat gray street. Although one may take this non-design as a view of something imposing and potentially authoritarian, it’s not necessarily as imposing as it is tasteless. Let’s be clear: I highly doubt that the a station with this design was located in the Newton Community/Menlo Park/South Central by accident. Pass by it and you can see for yourself: the city of Los Angeles has built this police station as a fortress.

These design flaws aren’t only an issue of resentment to its community, but to working officers as well. In 2004, the British Institute for Public Policy Research released a report that rightly argued that the design of a police station affects the community’s confidence in their police officers, their fear of crime and their overall sense of security in their neighborhood. “All too often police facilities send off the wrong messages about the attitudes and working of the police,” the report states. Does a bland, gray all-business cop shop on south Central Avenue evoke security? Maybe within its walls, but it clearly doesn’t look like anyone inside is trying to be involved with the wellbeing of anything outside its walls. Too bad, though ... that community that would love a design champion.

2. The Galen Center

The Galen Center is the most self-serving, self-important, and self-appreciated building in Los Angeles, and proof positive that the city of L.A. lets USC do whatever it wants in South Los Angeles. The overbearing corridor that this monstrosity and the USC parking lot create on the 110 freeway is disgusting, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is what causes traffic into Downtown L.A. to slow to a crawl. Sure, it gives the USC basketball team a place to play; but let’s call the Galen Center what it is: a box. No different in style or exterior blight than the previously criticized Beverly Center. It doesn’t add anything to the community but something to look up at, is strikingly dissimilar to structures in the area (aside from the parking lot), and is uncharacteristically monolithic for the neighborhood (although USC’s been working at slowly changing that).

The color scheme, a mix of sand-tan and brick red, reminds me of apartment developments from the late 1970s when designers wanted everything in earth tones. They thought it looked more natural, somehow making your building more in tune with Mother Nature. Oddly enough, relief sculpture was also a staple of the 1970s, as any drive through civic-funded projects in East or South East Los Angeles will show.

But the Galen Center has no excuse: we all know what 70s design looks like and we all know that it makes a structure look dated. Here we are, practically 40 years later, and a brand new building is somehow behind the times. The USC School of Planning and Policy should’ve been all over this, screaming about design consistency, height requirements, design compatibility ... fairness and social justice! Alas, the bottom line is that no developer aside from USC would be allowed to build this eyesore, especially in South Los Angeles. USC tells the city what it plans on doing and the city just stands out of the way. In fact, USC originally didn’t want to have an Expo Line stop on Exposition Boulevard, and the city didn’t exactly jump up to protest right away. That’s right: right in front of the county National History Museum, Botanical Garden, and Museum of Science & Industry. Good thing they magnanimously changed their minds.

3. That New Building at Los Angeles Trade Tech

Planted on Grand Avenue between 22nd and 23rd street, the new Los Angeles Trade Tech building, with its strange curvilinear accents and drowned-out color scheme, was, as conceived, such a good idea. The original renderings looked clean and seemed like a fitting and interesting infusion into the surrounding area. I was certainly fooled by the conceptual drawings (despite my own advice against falling for gimmicks like that).

as conceived

Last fall, I spent a semester passing this building on my way to a late-night welding class, and was generally impressed with its development. Basically a regular rectangular building with interesting details and deliberately-misaligned elements in its façade, it boasted nothing striking about its design, but overall it was interesting enough to return to each week to catch up on its progress. As construction began and the building design came to fruition, the more striking the design seemed to become: a wide industrial motif, a sleek amorphous exterior, strong creative lines, and what seemed like a bold contrast to the buildings surrounding it (which, it can be safely assumed, were built when no one cared about asbestos or preparing for earthquakes).

But then the building began to take its non-exciting final forms Aside from the bells-and-whistle design gestures, I couldn’t really figure out what it was trying to accomplish. What were the purposes of the curvy or awkward vertical façade elements? To give the building the illusion of interesting design? Its vapid exterior panels and that ugly brown ribbon that’s supposed to somehow serve as a façade ornament try to convince the viewer that they’re looking at something original, but it doesn’t take a sharp eye to notice that it’s ultimately still just a bland box of a building. You can hang stuff on it, add stuff to it, move stuff around, or color it up any way you like, but the moment your eye hits this structure you can’t help but see a regular ol’ boring building right underneath it, right through the transparency of its exterior design gimmicks. Really, they’re just too gimmicky to ignore.

as built

Of course, the saddest part of this building’s design is that the Los Angeles Community College District really had a great opportunity to try to fabricate something interesting and sustainable. And the best they came up with was this. Why, though? Did they cut the budget and skimp on details? On building materials? Did they hire a cheap contractor? Did their schedule rush some of the finer accents or structural complexity? Or was it really all just a lie that the designer used a pretty rendering to sell to us? Why did this building have to look like this when it could have looked like anything? There was a point where nothing was drawn on paper, nothing was imagined, nothing was visualized. And from that vast and creative blank slate came this bland bland structure.

Oh, well, there’s always next time, Los Angeles Trade Technical College.

Next up (at some point): The Ugliest Architecture in East L.A.

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