Category Archives: Architecture

Pictures of buildings

Downtown Los Angeles

Architecture, Dining, Photographs

From the Bonaventure.

No one could accuse John Portman of making boring buildings, and his many hotels across the world are a testament to the belief that the destination should be the highlight of a journey. He has left a massive footprint with his innovative designs which span the globe. An American original. I have always loved his Bonaventure Hotel (1977) in downtown Los Angeles and would visit frequently to enjoy the architecture when a resident (1987-93) of what is my favorite American city.

So when my 13 year old son Winston and I visited Los Angeles last week, one goal was to show him the best of the best across this amazing city. These were snapped from our room on the 30th floor. The views were simply thrilling, downtown America at its best.

The vast lobby with its many pools is a surprisingly quiet and restful place. Noise does not resonate here. It simply wafts away up the vast atrium. Check-in and check-out were exceptionally smooth and professional, American hospitality management at its best. These people clearly love what they do.


Winston stays dry.


John Portman’s distinctive architecture.

There’s an outstanding, if expensive, steak house on the 35th floor named the Prime Rib, where Winston and I enjoyed the finest steaks we can recall. Walk down one level to the 34th floor and you will find yourself in the rotating bar – quite something – and the vibrations from the motor can just be felt in the Prime Rib if you touch the table with your fingertips! These places typify the sense of wonder which pervades this venue.


The Prime Rib boasts tremendous food and views.

You can read more about John Portman here. Portman also designed San Francisco’s Hyatt.

First two snaps on the Panny GX7 with the kit zoom, the third on the iPhone 6. I used a small and very light Oben carbon fiber tripod for the night shots – a fine and unobtrusive travel companion which will fit in the smallest of bags, weighing some 2.5lbs with ball head. An ideal match for the small Panasonic camera body.

William Stout books

Architecture, Book reviews

Architecture.

William Stout books is located in the heart of San Francisco’s interior design area of Jackson Square and has been in its current location for 27 years. The focus here is on architecture, urbanism, landscape, design and art. There’s even a small pure photography section though obviously photography pervades much of their inventory.

Spread over two floors, this sort of place can do serious damage to the architecture aficionado’s wallet.


The upper level.


The lower level.

Curiously, signs on the lower level proclaim “Please do not Photograph Books” (eh?) but the atmosphere is friendly and browsers are encouraged to take a seat and enjoy what the store has to offer. There are so many books here that the best way to put the sheer range of choice in context is to point out that tomes on California garden design alone take up a large bookcase. You will not find Amazon style discounts, but then you will not find this sort of selection on Amazon either.

I snapped up a copy of History’s Anteroom which is a photo book showing the effects of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire as well as the heroic subsequent reconstruction of the city. You can get this through Amazon but not discounted – the book is actually published by William Stout themselves, and is highly recommended, if not cheap at $40 + tax.


Click the picture for William Stout’s site.

Marlowe lives

Architecture

Film Noir at its best.

I have been watching Howard Hawks’s ‘The Big Sleep’ (1939 – but check the Comments) for decades now and have long ago given up trying to figure out whodunit. The plot is so many layered, so vastly complex, that I prefer to luxuriate in Humphrey Bogart’s and Lauren Bacall’s acting while enjoying my favorite city in America, Los Angeles. The movie is one of the rare cases where monochrome trumps color.

San Francisco has done a far better job of preserving its inter-war buildings than either LA or New York. The atmospheric Bunker Hill of Philip Marlowe’s day has long been torn down, replaced by soulless glass and steel buildings and Frank Gehry’s execrable Disney Concert Hall, an eye sore of rare foulness. New York also gives short shrift to historical preservation as the world’s center of greed abhors space that cannot be developed and rented for top dollar. Whether it’s the lighter touch of commerce in San Francisco or the fact that the big bucks reside thirty miles south in Silicon Valley, I do not know, but the city is brimming with gorgeous buildings from the ’30s and ’40s.

This one was spotted on Howard Street and the threatening shadow suggested nothing so much as the office space that a gumshoe of Marlowe’s persuasion would have occupied. Marlowe, for ever down on his luck, would have been in one of the smaller offices on a low floor. Not for him the high rent suggested by the magnificent double height windowed floor. As is often the case, the backdrop is a modern building presumably designed by a structural engineer, because architecture is nowhere to be seen. Here it only serves to heighten the beauty of the older masterpiece, caught in a shaft of late afternoon light on a freezing winter’s day.

G3, 45-200mm @ 103mm.

Here’s one of the many posters for that cinematic masterpiece:

A more recent version of the LA ’40s crime mystery, no less well made or acted, gains from a simpler plot compared to The Big Sleep what it loses to color – L.A. Confidential.

For those preferring San Franciscan detectives, Dashiel Hammett’s Sam Spade is as good a stand-in for Marlowe as any.

One of my commitments for 2012 is to publish more architectural photography and, checking this blog, I see it’s a subject I have addressed on many occasions, so I have added an Architecture category. You can access this by clicking here or by diving into the drop down menu under ‘Categories – Photographs’ at the bottom of this screen.