I recently gave a lecture on the Art Deco style aboard the HMS Queen Mary at the behest of the fine folks at the Art Deco Society. It was sold out and many were dressed to impress as if they were on a voyage back to 1936, others were just fans of the past. It occurred to me that it was rather unusual that so many people would show up in honor of a design "style". Why? Because it spoke to them in one way or another. One guest loved the streamlined design of that period because it was optimistic, like the locomotives of the 20th Century Limited or the 1939 New York World’s Fair, others wanted to relive the decadent "Gatsby" era created by F. Scott Fitzgerald. (That emotion drove Embraer to commission us to work on the Art Deco "Manhattan" Jet project.) Design most certainly “spoke” to each person and drew them for a variety of reasons. Regardless, the last touch point is to relive the style authentically, by actually being in those places, like the grand Ballroom of the legendary Queen Mary. ( It was moving just to get to speak there...)
Design is a language
In essence, design does "speak" to us, it is a language, and when it speaks in different cities, it adopts a dialect or accent that is drawn from it’s era and the spirit that created it. Erase those architectural “adjectives” and you lose the expression of a time and place, or that city’s historic narrative. They say history is best understood in context, and LA’s architecture provides that context. Those structures and sites are sincere products of their time that teach us. Streamline moderne with it’s clean lines and aerodynamic forms for example, recalls the dynamism of aviation and opportunity that Los Angeles was built on. Hollywood Regency, for example, is unique to LA, speaking to the mid-century glamour that defined Hollywood’s "Golden Age."
These styles are the pure “languages” as they are not cheaply revived, they are authentic expressions of their time, captured in movies, Raymond Chandler novels, photos, and eventually become the immortal essence of LA. As much as preserved Paris endures as the emotional language of France, LA with Art Deco is eternally synonomus with Hollywood.
In the end, we don’t fall in love with styles, we love what they mean to us. The minute the conversation becomes about “saving buildings”, then we’ve missed “the why” of preservation. True, every building is not a keeper, and nothing is wrong with development and progress, but the “adjectives”, the examples that emotionally say “Hollywood”, or “Miracle Mile”, or “Sunset Blvd” are the fragments that endure and truly speak for LA, even as times and generations change. It makes you wonder why shopping streets like "Old Town" Pasadena here in Los Angeles, or other renovated historic shopping districts still draw a crowd despite the closure of "big box" retailers and regional malls. They are experiential. They have soul and roots. They possess a quality that borrows from the past. Their existence conveys reassurance to the visitor. Sure, the stores within are changing, but there is a great sense of experience in "the stroll" versus just hanging out in a mall.
Virtual Reality- Straight up with a twist
