The Omnivorous Eye

California Department of Transportation District 7 Headquarters, Thom Mayne, 2004

Earl's Service, Gilmore Gas Station, Farmers Market

Sean Casey, storm chaser and IMAX director, in front of his Tornado Intercept Vehicle

I think 90% of design research is the act of walking through the world with your eyes open. Today I was reminded of Martin Schall, one of the all-time champions in that department. Schall, called "LA's Intimate Stranger" by the LA Times, has been shooting Los Angeles—mostly our architecture, but also vehicles, street art, and anything else that catches his distinguished eye—since he visited as a tourist in 1966. He makes yearly pilgrimages to our fair city and though he's not known for it even to those close to him, he has become well known here and among urban designers for the detailed, street-level documentation of LA on his web site, you-are-here.com. He's not an architect, photographer or connected to urban design at all. He's a German oil and gas engineer who works on oil rigs in the Persian Gulf. What spare time he has is dedicated to maintaining the web site, and when his boss forces him to take time off, he comes to LA to continue his mission. 

I celebrate his magnificent obsession and invite you to examine the length and breadth of his site—the STARchitects, the Googie, the Transportation, and especially the MAP—with the same attention to detail that he gives our town. You won't be disappointed. 

The Art of the Car Display

Los Angeles is the original car-centric culture, and we have brought the art of the car display to a highly refined level. Above is an early example, at the house of movie star Frederick March's Bel Air mansion (found on image-archaeology.com, a wonderful repository of post cards, matchbook covers, and other SoCal ephemera). Perhaps it is this convergence of auto culture and Hollywood culture that created the phenomenon. Touring the well-manicured homes of the stars, might Angelinos have longed to create a display of their own?

I still have a small treasure of a book, Charles Jenks's "Daydream Houses of Los Angeles," in which he tours LA residential neighborhoods and waxes acidic with pithy captions like, "Debbie Reynolds Egyptoid with Topiary Petrol Pumps and Car Display." Love it.

Here is a north-of-San-Vicente version. Less is more (less is a bore?).

Not to be confused with cars (in this case, trucks) parked ON the lawn. Every neighborhood has one of these households....

But you don't have to be rich to engage in the art, especially if you can get your neighbor to collaborate by paving over the yard between the houses. Muscle cars like caterpillars in their pupae, waiting (but for ample amounts of money and elbow grease) to be reborn.