When archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Reyn­er Ban­ham wrote Los Ange­les: The Archi­tec­ture of Four Ecolo­gies (1971), quite pos­si­bly the most influ­en­tial book pub­lished about the South­ern Cal­i­forn­ian metrop­o­lis, he saw fit to dis­miss the cen­ter of the city with what he called “a note on down­town.” He con­cedes that it has its land­marks, like the Cathe­dral of San­ta Vib­iana and the much-filmed Brad­bury Build­ing, “one of the most mag­nif­i­cent relics of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry com­mer­cial archi­tec­ture any­where in the world.” But he finds the urban scene that sur­rounds them hope­less­ly deplet­ed: “Many US cities have had their down­town areas fall into this kind of desue­tude,” but “in none of the oth­ers does one have quite such a strong feel­ing that this is where the action can­not pos­si­bly be.”

Things have changed since The Archi­tec­ture of Four Ecolo­gies came out more than half a cen­tu­ry ago. After count­less abort­ed attempts at revival, down­town Los Ange­les seems final­ly to have found its way to becom­ing a true city cen­ter once again.

This has to do with a num­ber of fac­tors, includ­ing its posi­tion­ing as the hub of the rail tran­sit that’s been open­ing in stages since the ear­ly nineties, its lev­els of com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial den­si­ty at which today’s zon­ing laws make dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to build, and the sheer diver­si­ty of its built envi­ron­ment. In the Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, Los Ange­les archi­tect Valéry Augustin pro­vides a walk­ing tour of that diver­si­ty, intro­duc­ing a strik­ing build­ing from each era of the city’s devel­op­ment.

Ban­ham and Agustin agree on the impor­tance of Los Ange­les’ City Hall and Union Sta­tion. But Augustin also high­lights the Art Deco East­ern Colum­bia Build­ing, the Chur­rigueresque Mil­lion Dol­lar The­ater, and a cou­ple of major struc­tures that Ban­ham did­n’t live to see, the Broad Muse­um and Ramon C. Cortines School Of Visu­al And Per­form­ing Arts. (Notably absent is Frank Gehry’s Walt Dis­ney Con­cert Hall, whose once-shock­ing metal­lic curves have per­haps been over­ex­posed over these past cou­ple of decades.) But what­ev­er the won­ders of down­town, it’s long been argued that Los Ange­les’ has more of a pri­vate archi­tec­tur­al her­itage than a pub­lic one; to under­stand the city’s archi­tec­ture, in oth­er words, you can’t ignore its hous­es.

Hence Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s hav­ing also put out a video in which Augustin breaks down the five most com­mon types of Los Ange­les home. These include exam­ple of the roman­ti­cized Mis­sion Revival style, the idyl­lic Cal­i­for­nia bun­ga­low, the board­walk beach house (as seen in ocean enclaves like San­ta Mon­i­ca and Venice), and more cul­tur­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive hous­ing forms such as bun­ga­low courts (as seen in Par­ty of Five) and post­war ding­bat apart­ments. With their broad car­ports, their play­ful­ly exot­ic names, and their box­like con­struc­tion front­ed, as Ban­ham observes, by a range of styles from “from Tacoburg­er Aztec to Wavy-Line Mod­erne, from Cod Cape Cod to un-sup­port­ed Jaoul vaults, from Gourmet Mansardic to Poly­ne­sian Gabled and even — in extrem­i­ty — Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture,” they may well be the most Los Ange­les build­ings of all.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Goo­gie Archi­tec­ture, the Icon­ic Archi­tec­tur­al Style of Los Ange­les

That Far Cor­ner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Ange­les – A Free Online Doc­u­men­tary

1,300 Pho­tos of Famous Mod­ern Amer­i­can Homes Now Online, Cour­tesy of USC

Take a Dri­ve Through 1940s, 50s & 60s Los Ange­les with Vin­tage Through-the-Car-Win­dow Films

Watch Randy Newman’s Tour of Los Ange­les’ Sun­set Boule­vard, and You’ll Love L.A. Too

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“When I first encoun­tered Wright’s work as an eight-year-old boy, it was the space and the light that got me all excit­ed,” says Stu­art Graff in the Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above. “I now under­stand why that gives us the feel­ing that it does, why we feel dif­fer­ent in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. That’s because he uses space and light to cre­ate this sense of inti­ma­cy with the world around us.” As luck would have it, Graff has grown up to become pres­i­dent and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion, and it is in that capac­i­ty that he leads us through one of the renowned Amer­i­can archi­tec­t’s last projects, a 1955 house along the Noro­ton Riv­er in New Canaan, Con­necti­cut called Tir­ran­na.

“While Tir­ran­na was being built, Wright was in New York City work­ing on his largest com­mis­sion, the Guggen­heim Muse­um,” says Graff. Also known as the Rayward–Shepherd House, Tir­ran­na is cer­tain­ly less wide­ly known than the Guggen­heim, and indeed, less wide­ly known than some of Wright’s oth­er res­i­den­tial work.

But as his pri­vate hous­es go, Tiran­na’s “set­ting rivals even per­haps Wright’s most famous work, Falling­wa­ter, in the way that house engages nature.” Built along a curve that “fol­lows the move­ment of the sun through the day” and tex­tured with con­trast­ing con­crete block and Philip­pine mahogany — not to men­tion plen­ty of glass through which to take in the land­scape out­side — it stands as a rich exam­ple of late Wright.

And rich is what you’d bet­ter be if you want to live it: accord­ing to a notice pub­lished in Archi­tec­tur­al Digest, Tir­ran­na went on the mar­ket last year for an ask­ing price of $8 mil­lion. Its 7,000 square feet make it one of Wright’s “largest and most expan­sive res­i­den­tial projects”; the “low-slung main home is designed in a hemi­cy­cle style — a unique­ly Wright shape — and fea­tures sev­en bed­rooms, eight bath­rooms, a rooftop obser­va­to­ry, and a wine cel­lar that has been con­vert­ed into a bomb shel­ter.” It even boasts the dis­tinc­tion of Wright him­self hav­ing stayed there, dur­ing the time he was still work­ing on the Guggen­heim. For a deep-pock­et­ed enthu­si­ast of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can archi­tec­ture, there could hard­ly be a more intrigu­ing prospect in New Canaan — as least since the Glass House isn’t for sale.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 360° Vir­tu­al Tours of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Archi­tec­tur­al Mas­ter­pieces, Tal­iesin & Tal­iesin West

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Japan­ese Mas­ter­piece, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo

What Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unusu­al Win­dows Tell Us About His Archi­tec­tur­al Genius

130+ Pho­tographs of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mas­ter­piece Falling­wa­ter

The Unre­al­ized Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright Get Brought to Life with 3D Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tions

When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Dog­house, His Small­est Archi­tec­tur­al Cre­ation (1956)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The very first sky­scraper went up in 1885 in Chica­go. It’s only nat­ur­al that such a brazen­ly ambi­tious form of build­ing would spring forth (or rather, up) from not just the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, but from that most aes­thet­i­cal­ly Amer­i­can of all metrop­o­lis­es. And though near­ly every world city now has high-ris­es on its sky­line (some of them only grudg­ing­ly tol­er­at­ed) the art of the sky­scraper has con­tin­ued to advance in the cap­i­tal of the Mid­west. Take 150 North River­side, fea­tured in the video above from Chica­go-based archi­tec­ture Youtu­ber Stew­art Hicks. Since its com­ple­tion in 2017, that 54-sto­ry tow­er has not just received crit­i­cal acclaim, but also the awe of onlook­ers to whom it seems like it should­n’t be able to stand at all.

“At its base, it’s almost like the tow­er’s been eat­en away, leav­ing its core behind,” Hicks says of its unusu­al shape. “You might think that this would make the entire build­ing struc­tural­ly unsta­ble — and you’d be right, if this fea­ture was­n’t com­pen­sat­ed for in the design and con­struc­tion process.” The engi­neer­ing involves mak­ing the arms of the Y‑shaped low­er lev­els “entire­ly out of steel. These ele­ments pre­car­i­ous­ly spring out of the con­crete core and trans­fer all of the loads of the out­side floors above. The forces are so great, these steel mem­bers are the largest I‑beams ever made,” spe­cial­ly designed and man­u­fac­tured for this project.

On the oth­er end sits a “tuned mass damper, which, fun­da­men­tal­ly, is just a giant con­crete water tank at the top of the build­ing.” When wind blows against the tow­er, caus­ing it to bend slight­ly, the water slosh­es around in response. “But the water moves slow­er than the build­ing does, so its weight is back over the orig­i­nal cen­ter of grav­i­ty,” which keeps the struc­ture from bend­ing too far. Though I’ve nev­er vis­it­ed 150 North River­side, I’ve seen a sim­i­lar mech­a­nism at work at the top of Taipei 101, the Tai­wanese cap­i­tal’s star sky­scraper, whose own tuned mass damper — enor­mous, spher­i­cal, and pen­du­lum-like — has become a favorite pho­to spot among tourists.

Hicks’ video also brought back an even ear­li­er mem­o­ry: that of Rainier Tow­er, a nine­teen-sev­en­ties office build­ing in Seat­tle whose taper­ing base impressed me in child­hood. Archi­tect Minoru Yamasa­ki (design­er, ear­li­er that decade, of the World Trade Cen­ter) used it in order “to main­tain as much free space at the base as pos­si­ble,” though it does tend to chan­nel winds with a Chica­go-like inten­si­ty. As for 150 North River­side, its per­ilous­ly tiny-look­ing foot­print result­ed from its lot, which offered a mere 35-foot-wide build­able space hemmed in by train tracks on one side and the Chica­go Riv­er on the oth­er. 150 North River­side stands, desir­ably, at the con­flu­ence of the river’s north and south branch­es — but also at the con­flu­ence of archi­tec­tur­al inge­nu­ity and the Chicagoan mon­ey­mak­ing spir­it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How a 1930s Archi­tec­tur­al Mas­ter­piece Har­ness­es the Sun to Keep Warm in the Win­ter & Cool in the Sum­mer

Why the Lean­ing Tow­er of Pisa Still Hasn’t Fall­en Over, Even After 650 Years

The Sto­ry of the Flat­iron Build­ing, “New York’s Strangest Tow­er”

Good­bye to the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er, Tokyo’s Strangest and Most Utopi­an Apart­ment Build­ing

Amaz­ing Aer­i­al Pho­tographs of Great Amer­i­can Cities Cir­ca 1906

10-Sto­ry High Mur­al of Mud­dy Waters Goes Up in Chica­go

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.