New Forms Taschen 188

Pages 190/199 Erie Owen Moss Ince Theater

Cutver City, California, 1994 (project)

This unbuilt 450-seat theater would be situated in what is currently the parking lot of the Gary Group- Lmdbladc Tower-Paramount Laundry buildings, which Moss has renovated over recent years. Makmg use of computer-aided design m this case, Moss developed the plan of the theater through the interaction of thrcc spheres.

Schweitzer. The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Energy Services Facility on the Brentwood campus is a Container for gas turbines, boilers, chillers and exhaust stacks, plus miles of pipes, ducts and raceways. It represents an effort to come to grips with the impact, both visual and practical, of technology on archi-tecture. As such it is far removed from the esthetic or geometrie explorations of Philip Johnson's guest pavilion. The work of the San Francisco firm Holt Hinshaw Pfau Jones, and especially of Wes Jones, who has now formed Jones Partners-Architecture, this plant is intended to cali into question the esthetic and intellectual place of technology in everyday life. In the earthquake zonę of Los Angeles, it ques-tions the supposed ability of technology to dominate naturę. Solid, even massive, one might say that it has a curious San Francisco air to it. What is interesting about the investigation of Wes Jones is that he is exploring 'the continuing possibilities of mechanically influenced architecture in the post-mechanical futurę." He has clearly thought about the implications of the new universe of electronics for architecture. As he says, "The dominance of the mechanical metaphor as a way of viewing the world is waning. In place of mechanical analogy and interpretation an explosion of electronic imagery - a mediated reality is asserting itself." But rather than trying to embrace the undefinable limits of "cyberspace" Jones declares, "The electronic will give the mechanical life, maybe even consciousness, while the mechanical will continue to give the electronic substance, will free it to have effect and aa in the substantial world." Thus the consciously mechanical metaphor of the UCLA plant.”

The Kate Mantilini Restaurant by Morphosis on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills has already been mentioned above. It is an example of a different attitude toward technology that the critic Charles Jencks dubbed "Dead Tech, that is, High-Tech after the Bomb, or ecological catastrophe." As Jencks says, this "signified a