Ever open to change and a challenge, in September 1983, I donned the cloak of the newly anointed urban design critic of the Los Angeles Times to principally cover architecture. But also planning, preservation, and redevelopment, in effect whatever shaped and misshaped the built environment, with a focus on Southern California. 

As my mixed media writings up to then should have clearly indicated, my perspective was that of a user; that the foundation of my critical matrix was that architecture was a social art, its prime purpose the shaping of the places and spaces for human endeavor, heedful of context and climate. Mistaken if not disappointed were the architects, and others in design, development, politics, and the media, who had assumed back then, in the “me-generation” years, that if the position became open it would probably go to a well-connected pedant pursuing fun, fame, and fortune. 

Not me. I consciously saw my role as a resolute advocate for a more livable and equitable city. I had given up what undoubtedly would have been an uptight, pressured job on Wall Street with the potential of earning an added zero or more to my income, for a holistic lifestyle in a benign L.A., married again, a triumph of hope over experience, and was enjoying it. And that included bringing to my new assignment the discerning experiences in the past as a social and cultural critic. 

This was in contrast to what I observed as the drift of architecture criticism into a debilitating elitism, not incidentally at a concurrent fracturing of journalism and the promotion of soft news, celebrating celebrities and conspicuous consumerism. The reams of words unfortunately I felt did not speak to the gut issues of how we could make our habitations more livable, rather than trendy follies. As I was to observe and repeat in several reviews, if it didn’t work as architecture, the so-called star architects called it art, their shallow vanities fed by fawning of critics wanting to be modish. 

Tempting as that was at the time, it was not me. I was not going to prostitute myself to have lunch with a self-important architect, be invited to appear for a four-figure fee at a developer-sponsored weekend retreat, or for an equally generous stipend write a foreword to a monograph, as has some of our more prominent critics. 

So my first article, in September 1983, intentionally was not on a latest singular conceit of the local gaggle of self-aggrandizing architects, but on infill, affordable housing in a pronounced liberal neighborhood in transition, and not a cliché suburban community typical of Southern California: 

“With view of a reservoir, nearby hillsides and distant mountains from its undulating landscape and respect for privacy and tolerance for varying ethnic groups and sexual preference, Silver Lake is one of the most popular residential areas for single, gays and Asians. Its views and hills also have been the testing ground for such architect masters as Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler and John Lautner. 

 “However, Silver Lake’s popularity heightened by its short commuting distance to downtown, has in the last few years prompted a spate of development that is changing the area’s image from an eclectic single family neighborhood to an eclectic collection of small condominiums and rental complexes, interspersed by individual houses. … The process is known as in-fill housing.” 

I continued: “Unfortunately, much of the in-fill housing has been designed out of scale and out of context, with little respect for the character of the street. A few appear as if they have been dropped down on the site from another region, if not planet. One wonders if the architect or developer, before having the buildings designed, bothered to get out of their cars to walk the site and streets to get a sense of the neighborhood, or whether the plans were just pulled out from some bottom drawer.” Probably.

 I went on commenting on disparate new projects, praising a few for their respectful scale and sensitive landscaping, but sharply criticizing others, describing several as no better than matched indecorous motels, and others as bad neighbors, blocking views with blank walls. Why some were selling, and others not, was noted, as well as their designer and developers identified. My first shots as the paper’s new architecture critic were fired; a shotgun blast, hitting select targets.

 Meanwhile, I was living in a comfortable, relatively pricey neighborhood in Santa Monica, in an unadorned Spanish bungalow, and incidentally just a few blocks away from the then ascending irrepressible architect Frank Gehry, in his distinctly idiosyncratic house.

Originally a modest plain, two-story Dutch Colonial structure, built in 1922, Gehry had exposed portions of the framework and wrapped it in an expanded shell of angled metal, plywood, and chain link. The raw materials made the house appear to be still under construction, or deconstruction, a cluttered expressionistic effect Gehry said he wanted to achieve. 

A showcase at that time for his singular talent, and whether labeled a “deconstructivist” icon, a punk exercise, or a middle finger to all, the house was attracting national attention. Gehry thrived on it, and though he had yet to design a major building, had become an architect to watch, an aging enfant terrible of design. Unquestionably, Gehry was the elephant in the room that was L.A. architecture, and I looked forward to meeting him.

 Vetting him in anticipation of a meeting in his office in funky Venice, I was predisposed to liking him. We both had grown up in modest circumstances, he in Toronto, me in Brooklyn, culturally but not religiously Jewish, and both our mothers were named Sadie, his coming from the possibly distant related Caplanaski clan, in Russia. Also into his second marriage, as I was, he had named a son, Sam. In addition, he had been described as a hustler, as I had been, and having worried at times in my youth in the Depression where the next meal was coming from, considered it an attribute. And we were both over-achievers.

It was therefore discouraging that Gehry at the first meeting was obsequious to a fault, the result of which I could not take most anything that he was saying as sincere; that he was in fact playing me, feeding me a mix of cliches and compliments. Noting my “welcomed” writing about the need for affordable housing, especially in minority neighborhoods, he confessed he was a socialist, too, wrongfully assuming so because of my concerns, as if that should label anyone other than a liberal. 

Further to my rising displeasure, he played what I would call the infamous “Jew card;” that we as ever paranoid “landsmen” should bond together against “them.” And when I raised his name change, from Goldberg to Gehry, as being timorous, he said he did it at his first wife’s urging, who thought it would be good for business. This blaming of others, be it also a client or a colleague, I found to be another unappealing trait of Gehry’s when confronted for whatever faults or failures might be found in his designs. I came away from the meeting distrusting him, which made me cautious viewing his projects in the future. And there were many.

 Foremost was his house. I actually liked it. As a cheap-tech construction fashioned with off-the-shelf materials, it demanded attention, and being two blocks away I would many mornings walk my dog there, stop and contemplate it. The dog would take that as a signal and use the time to relieve himself. I mentioned it off-handily to some architecture professor, who broadcast it, in quest of his five minutes of fame. 

Hearing of it, Gehry filed a complaint with the City of Santa Monica, charging me with littering. It was summarily rejected, but it soon became a gossip item, in a magazine article about dogs and their owners, and repeated locally, attracting yet more publicity for Gehry. He was if anything irrepressible in quest of ink, it being good for business. And it was. 

Gehry’s commissions increased considerably in the ’80s decade, with my liking some, and sometimes praising in my reviews, But I also took exception to others, and for that would be accused of heresy by his followers, who urged I be replaced by The Times with someone more sympathetic to Gehry’s artistry, and of course also theirs. Despite much acclaim and awards, fame, and fortune, Gehry never reacted well to criticism, however constructive and respectfully couched. Designs aside, I found him vain to the point of insufferable. 

As a New York–based critic who asked me whether Gehry was always ill tempered, having been curtly put down by him when she questioned the context of one of his projects, I replied no. “Urban design is not Frank’s forte,” I answered in an email, adding his focus is usually on the buildings as objects rather than their contexts and users. “He might state otherwise, but you have to look at what Gehry the practicing architect does, not what Frank the celebrity architect says,” I added. “And beware, when praised he can be a warm puppy, when criticized a mad dog. Watch your hand.” 

As for my dog, I stopped walking him past Gehry’s house, and avoided Frank when I could at the various architecture soirees we both attended. But to be sure, I conscientiously reviewed his various projects. 

I praised his design of Loyola Law School. Hinting at a raw classicism, the fragmented school formed a welcomed urban campus, making a singular statement about its downtown context and as a focal point.

More confused was the Aerospace Museum, in L.A.’s Exposition Park, where trying to find the main entrance was an adventure, as was wending through the exhibit halls. I also trashed Gehry’s awkwardly sited Cabrillo Museum in San Pedro. User-friendly it was not. But both museums were ballyhooed from afar by critics, who I wondered ever visited the projects.

Then there was the residential Indiana Avenue complex, a modest exercise of cheap materials, unpainted plywood, and blue stucco, mimicking the tone of its Venice neighbors. What I found distressing was that all the oversized windows that were to provide soft light for the artist occupants at work, faced a glaring south instead of a shadowed north. 

It was a mistake that when asked about it, Gehry blamed on an associate who became confused by a survey, as if no one, including himself, had ever actually walked the site or supervised the construction. 

I wrote this reluctantly, knowing this was sure to invite some nasty asides from Gehry and his sycophants. Though more important to me was writing what I had felt and experienced; that this was what the public expected of critics, acting as their advocates. 

But as I had observed in New York and now Los Angeles, getting ink was the name of the game for architects, and in this Gehry was a superstar. The Santa Monica architect may, or may not, have been the most imaginative designer since Frank Lloyd Wright, but he certainly was the most publicized. And however I might have felt about him, I was compelled to cover whatever he was designing, be it a public library in Hollywood, or a trendy restaurant in Venice. 

As for the library, I wrote (in August 1986) that it was a qualified success, its “cubist massing of the structure is well-scaled to the street and friendly, but not so friendly was the 15-foot wall and wrought iron gate fronting the street, constructed for obvious security reasons. But the horizontal, light blue tiles somewhat relieve the impact.” 

I did add that it was nice to note that Gehry did not use chain-link fence, once one of his trademarks. That there was enough of it already in the neighborhood, and “one does not always have to mimic context.” What I particularly appreciated was the naturally light interior, and an inviting children’s area, continuing my praise, with slight damn: 

“There are few surprises, which was a surprise in itself, given Gehry’s usual penchant for architectural excesses. Rather the Goldwyn library is a fairly simple, straightforward, somewhat austere, well-detailed construction, very much in the modernist idiom.” 

As a result, I commented, it is not a design that will prompt the excitement a Gehry design usually generates among those architects, magazine editors and jury members hungry for something different, adding “as if different necessarily makes design successful.” 

If the library could be considered a result of Gehry’s ego, the Venice restaurant designed about the same time in 1986, Rebecca’s was a product of his id. Having no sense of entry, no drama, only confusion and poor circulation, I dismissed the design as a disaster. But the novelle Mexican food was a delight. As for my awkward dance with Gehry, it continued, though I was finding it increasingly a bore, distracting me from reviewing projects of other architects, and chronicling more of my concern and that of the paper’s readers: a rising urban design consciousness in a Los Angeles in midst of growing pains, not unlike that of a gawky adolescent.

“From San Pedro to Sunland, from Boyle Heights to Venice, across dinner tables and back fences, at supermarkets, shopping centers and gas pumps, on the job and at the beaches, weather is no longer the prime topic,” I observed in a feature article in The Times Sunday magazine (October 26, 1986). “It has been replaced by such issues as traffic, planning and zoning, and whether Lotusland is disappearing in a cloud of exhaust fumes or in the shadow of a high rise.” 

The article appeared when The Times management was receiving apparently orchestrated complaints from architects and their publicists, echoed in some corners of the newsroom, that I should be devoting less space to public concerns. That they were the purview of the news department and reporters, not critics, and that I should be paying more attention to the design professionals and the real estate industry, then in those halcyon days before the rise of the internet. 

Perhaps at the time I had not been as politic as I should have been, as if I ever was. That would have been to insincerely agree with my critics while doing what I wanted anyway. I was not one to respond with a humble smile at choice desks. Rather I answered obliquely, within my regular weekly Sunday column, inside The Times, also appearing October 26, 1986: “There has been an echoing lament from who else but the architects that this column pays an inordinate amount of attention to planning and preservation issues and not enough to architecture. My contention, of course, is planning and preservation issues are architecture issues, and if architects don’t address them, they will soon find themselves in a small corner of the design world.” 

I contended too many architects appeared to have designed themselves into that corner, preoccupied with the look and symbolism of their structures, rather than with their functions and social and cultural context, adding that in this “perfidious pursuit to become a superstar, these self-appointed serious architects seem to work as hard at promoting or trying to explain their projects as designing them.” 

To these aspiring architects then clustering in Los Angeles, Gehry was the true superstar, and try as they might to mimic him, all were in his shadow. And observing him up close, one had to admit that for all his self-promotion and off-putting personality, Gehry was indeed a talent, and a homegrown one at that. 

Thus I supported him in the coveted Walt Disney Concert Hall competition, to be sure his most ambitious project, consisting of a program calling for separate concert and chamber music halls, boldly sited on top of Bunker Hill downtown, adjacent to the city’s nascent cultural center. 

I declared Gehry’s design most lyrical, featuring a limestone-clad sculpted façade, fronted at the structure’s most prominent corner with a foyer in the form of a glistening glass conservatory, to be filled with native California plants. That and the adjacent plaza would in effect create “a living room” for the city, according to Gehry’s statement, a place for promenading, sitting, exhibits and outdoor concerts. In effect, a public place of the kind I was recommending in my urban design articles. 

It also was clearly the most promising of the four schemes submitted, including those from world renown designers, and I subsequently praised and championed the Gehry scheme (December 11, 1988). 

That column was published to much fanfare, shortly after which in early 1989 he was chosen as the architect. His being awarded a Pritzker, the highest honor for architects, would also come in 1989, and the much sought-after design commission for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the next year. He was on a roll, with commissions in short time in France, Germany, Spain, and a host of other countries. His hustling was paying big dividends.

Not that I would have eaten crow, for I was pleased for him, and liking to travel as I do, looked forward to the possibility of all-expense paid assignments abroad to write how an L.A.-based architect was winning over the world. He had certainly worked hard for the Disney commission, his office a beehive of activity, however reportedly difficult he was to work for and ungenerous. To be fair, these were dubious complaints I also heard from other offices of so-called star architects, where “schadenfreude” seemed to be the only common pleasure in L.A.’s design community.

Though not wanting to get personal with subjects whose works I was reviewing, I found Gehry individually insufferable, and having risen to international acclaim, increasingly more so. I therefore felt a certain amount of relief that I wouldn’t have to attend the inevitable press conferences and write about the piling on of accolades, having as a critic left that to others at The Times under the guise of news. 

Besides, unbeknownst to The Times, a moment of truth for me was fast approaching… 

This is an excerpt from Kaplan’s just-published An Urban Odyssey: A Critic’s Search for the Soul of Cities and Self (Academic Studies Press). Featured image: Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA, via Wikipedia Commons.