 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
MM: That's right. They keep talking about the Internet as being this kind of community plugged into a really wide world. It is hardly what I
think an architect would tend to call, based on tradition and history, a public endeavor. So that room at the Getty was all about trying to create this sense of public in a less-than-public environment. We did a lot of research on what we called semi-public spaces, like movie theaters, where there are a large group of people but you are all
watching something simultaneously in one direction. We also looked at cafes where they now have a kind of "cyber" or electronic hook to them. We actually looked at the café as a more interesting paradigm, where in the Getty space you ended up sitting around the base or roots of this animated, sculptural tree at your individual computer. Then at the branches of the tree, you had these video projectors that projected out to screens that wrapped around to become the space. You could take what you were working on and project it onto the screens, thereby making what you were doing public. Like when you were a kid and went to a bowling alley and your scores are projected up on a screen. It's a more advanced idea than that, but the idea was the same, that you would be infatuated by actually being able to show something of what you were working on live. In fact, at the Getty it was really successful because people would come over and watch what you were doing and talk across the room, thus it became a much more lively kind of café atmosphere. It took you out of that tunnel that you often have when you are working on the computer. The interesting aside to me, and it is a peculiar thing to hang the success of a project on, was that one of the great fears that
the Getty had when we started the project was that if we projected images up, all the kids would go to some sex site and project pornography. In fact, they had one or two instances of that in a year, hardly any. When they started looking at why that was, the answer that kept coming up was because it was public. That's contrary to what is happening on the Internet a lot, which is that a huge majority of the
people do go and look at pornography - they do it because they are in their private room. But as soon as you move the discourse out into a public space, you apply social rules and in a sense a kind of
self-policing, social series of constraints. The kind of thing that was going on there, making it public, was in some ways as radical, if not more radical, then what the internet actually provides because it was really ripping something and tearing at that privacy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Staff member working on Getty project model Paul Lee
|
|
|
|
|
V5: Are they still supporting this program?
MM: No, they are not. It was a project that was meant to be there for about a year because the museum wanted its space back. There was a sense that it would last longer because it was so popular, but it ended up getting taken down after a year. I was very surprised because we thought
it was still going well. I actually had a chance to talk to Barry Munitz at one point, who mentioned that was the kind of project the Getty was trying to do. I was surprised they ended it, and no one has ever actually told me why or what happened. It was discouraging because I wish they would build it somewhere else or give it to somebody, because
it was very successful.
V5: It seems like something that would be appropriate for the science park by USC.
MM: It would be great for that. We are also working on a new Children's Museum in Pasadena and it would be a great thing for them, too.
V5: I would like to wrap up by asking you about the 101 New Blood Exhibit which you were included in last year. How did you find out about it?
MM: Bob Hale called me and asked if I would be interested in participating. I've always been interested in the generation of Los Angeles architects that I am a part of whose work can be seen simultaneously within its own context. I think that rarely happens because, for whatever reason, architecture is a horrible, cutthroat, nasty, self-serving, egotistical business that we all say we hate, and we all somehow support. There isn't much dialogue between practices.
It's a little stronger on the East Coast because the institutions support it and curate it more, though it is a bit more of a closed community. I always feel that Los Angeles doesn't have that kind of forum. There have been attempts at it, but for whatever reasons there hasn't been as much interest sparked in it. So it was great to be a participant in the "101." It felt like it could have been five shows -- there was so much work there and the show was so huge that I think it was difficult for people to put the work in context. It was overload.
But I do think it made two things very clear: how much quality and talent there is here, really a lot of very strong work, and also how much of an effect the computer and computer publishing programs have had on your ability to represent your work. For example, in some cases firms of two people had boards that were as graphically impressive, if not
more so, than firms of hundred people.
V5: It is a great leveler.
MM: Yes, it is, and it was probably the first time I've seen it so intensely. I also think it was the first show that represented all the work that's been taking place since the recession. Before the recession,
people were keeping posted on what was going on in Los Angeles and everyone had a sense of the projects. Then the recession happened and
everyone went out of business and went back into their cave (laughs).
Then it started getting better, and everyone's been working on projects, but there was a lag between people getting the projects, working on them
and then being able to show them. That felt like the first time that you actually saw that people are doing a huge amount of work in the city.
That was really interesting.
V5: It's also interesting how much the Gehry office had been a touchstone for so many firms.
MM: Daly, Genik; Guthrie + Buresh; Lubowicki/Lanier, Randall Stout... many, many people have come through that office. It has been a kind of conduit, but the interesting thing is how much those people's work seems to be so much their own work. It is empowered by having been a part of that office and by the work that has come out of that office. I do think there are a lot individual voices out there, and in an interesting way the work might have more to do with Schindler and Neutra then it does aesthetically with the work that's coming out of Eric Moss's office, Morphosis or Frank Gehry's office. I think it's a very interesting thing to keep tabs on because it also says something about the cultural security and maturity of the city that people are willing recognize that there is quality and value in work going back that far.
V5: Thank you, Michael.
Return to volume5
|
|
|
