Los Angeles Architecture: The Contemporary Condition

Countering the customary image of Los Angeles as a city of vast freeways, nondescript towers and amorphous urban sprawl, this snazzy survey showcases some of the most inventive and influential modern American architecture. Beginning with the Spanish Mission style developed in the 1880s, the book discusses the projects of Frank Lloyd Wright, who adapted Mayan and Spanish designs; the ecologically attuned work of his successors, Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra; the controversial postmodernist buildings of Frank Gehry; and the intuitive, individualistic approach of the Sci-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) avant-garde. Steele, an architect and associate professor at the University of Southern California, also looks at urban improvement projects designed to restore a ``common meeting ground'' in the public realm. The houses, libraries, apartments, civic centers, office buildings, museums and restaurants featured in the 200 color plates embody imaginative solutions to architectural and urban planning challenges. (Nov.)