The colors — blue and yellow — of the building almost completed on the northwest corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea Avenue in West Hollywood might lead one to think that Sweden has reconsidered the decision it made five years ago to close its Los Angeles consulate.
On the other hand the silvery fronds that recently grew out of the corner of the building facing the Santa Monica and La Brea intersection are likely to conjure up images of a more supernatural force.
Those fronds are part of an art installation called “Corner Glory” designed by the Ball-Nogues Studio of Los Angeles for the corner of the Dylan apartment building (named, by the way, for Dylan Thomas).
“Its presence invites us into a dialog about this particular corner,” Ball-Nogues says on its website. What is happening here? What is special about this building and corner? What took place here? It transforms the corner into a gateway without creating a boundary line.”
Indeed, the Dylan does sit at the eastern gateway to West Hollywood, whose border ends just across La Brea Avenue. It is slated to open later this summer with 184 units. The Dylan is a project of Monarch Builders and Essex Property Trust, which earlier this year opened the Huxley, a 187-unit apartment building on La Brea at Fountain Avenue.
The Ball-Nogues description goes on to suggest that the installation reflects the personality of West Hollywood in other ways: “The work can also be read as an urban-scaled feather boa, the 70’s and 80’s fashion pop icon of gender ambiguity and flamboyance.”
Monstrous, ugly buildings being allowed by the greed of the city council, attracting too many people, too many cars, and destroying the very neighborhood qualities which made residents of east-side WeHo move here in the first place. I’d like to see how many residents and workers of this neighborhood can pay the “luxury” prices assigned to the supposedly “affordable” units. Our city council needs to stop turning WeHo into a “Mini Manhattan”. The prices in the surrounding stores and restaurants are already increasing, how long before we experience the traffic/pedestrian deaths that the west-side is having? And since when is… Read more »
Personally I see this as a piece about out of town greed eating up the Urban Village. To think that a one story fast rood restaurant got traded up for this mega money, gridlock creating, view killing , bland mega box is to me a statement of greed out of control in #weho. Four long term council members that have taken so much money thru the years from this developer and or those involved in this project they couldn’t say no. along with a planning commission thats just a puppet of those who appointed them. And in the end zoning… Read more »
It looks like a building in drag. That’s pretty cool.
Wait until pigeons start impaling themselves on it…
I made the first comment and I stand by it even if it wasn’t published.
The metal fringe thing looks like eyelashes and I think it is ugly. I don’t mind the colors on the building, but that fringe thing is another story.
An aesthetic gateway, the Dylan and The Huxley? I’m sure they will find some organization to bestow a design award on these otherwise hulking and forgettable structures lacking in integrity and resonance.
If one has to go to extremes to
announce their arrival, they really have never arrived.
A squandered opportunity to make the ‘Gateway’ corner beautiful and inviting. Must say I liked the Route 66 neon installations, though.
It looked better as a Carl’s Jr. with a huge parking lot where people could park as opposed to 184 units with close to 360 more cars flooding our streets. Once it gets filled up, La Brea will be unusable.
Adam, don’t cry….the hookers and drug dealers have just moved about half a mile east. Shouldn’t be too hard for you to get there. But just leave those of us alone who are loving this progress.
Hopefully this is a temporary installation. It seems to be the trend here in West Hollywood to erect non-desript, cookie cutter, multi-use structures and slap on some uglification on the facade to distinguish from all the rest. What happened to “form follows function”?
@ Pat. Well said! In fact, all the above comments say it all…..
Supernatural? Sweden-inspired? How about just plain ugly. And that begins with the horrendous colors. I agree with Ball-Nogues when he thinks that people will ask “What happened here?” That’s what I’d like to know. What the hell happened to make this one of the ugliest corners in West Hollywood?
It looks interesting at night when lit up, but just plain odd during the day.