Architect’s Designs Not Seen as a Solution

In “Urban but Human” (March 22), architect Michael Graves proposes to create a group of buildings in Los Angeles with “a feeling of humanity.” The structures, he explains, have been designed to resolve and soften the “jarring contrast in scale” between the freeway and the quiet adjacent neighborhoods. He is to be commended for addressing such a pressing need, but I fail to see how his design solution comes even close to achieving his stated goal.

Graves seems to be of the opinion that because the buildings he has designed are not glass towers, they offer a more humane environment. He chides his contemporaries who “have forgotten that people come first.”

Yet how are his 20-story towers sensitive to basic human needs? Where is the gentle transition into the surrounding quiet neighborhoods? Graves would have us believe that by adding “terra cotta tiles in varied colors” and a few horizontally divided segments to these massive structures, they are rendered compatible to human interaction, that he has somehow created neighborly monoliths.

Like many of the post-modernist architects, Graves feels that detailing his towering buildings solves the problem of oppressive machine-like environment. But just giving scale to structure does not humanize it. Beyond a certain size, irrespective of how many features are applied to the face of a building, it has no personal meaning. It ceases to tell those who look upon it that it is there for the enrichment of their lives.

The towers of Michael Graves are really no closer to being a humane environment than the glass towers he criticizes. The exterior of the glass tower at least tries to hide its overwhelming mass behind less obtrusive, reflecting surfaces; it tries to disappear, which in the long run, may be the more humane solution to buildings that are inherently detrimental to the quality of life.

BYRON HOMES, AIA

Laguna Beach