“A City within the Country, Country within the City”
From 1942 to 1962, the population of Los Angeles
urban renewal and shopping center schemes that Gruen pioneered.
County more than doubled. For the next 20 years it
He left the firm in 1958, just as the great city building boom began, to
remained almost static, while the four surrounding
found his own architectural illustration studio. Clients came first from
counties, built on the skeleton of the freeway system,
Gruen and his fertile stable, notably Cesar Pelli and Frank O. Gehry;
grew as much as 25 percent per year. As the city
but his practice rapidly expanded to a national level with work for the
stretched out to ranchland, developers discovered that
giant firms of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, San Francisco; Hellmuth,
planned suburbs with a consistent aesthetic program
Obata, Kassabaum, St Louis; and Minoru Yamasaki, for whom Diniz
of spaciousness, rusticity and only a gentle hint of the
developed an elaborate series of presentation panels for New York’s
traditional city achieved profits far in excess of the tra-
World Trade Center. By the mid ‘70s, Diniz was providing promo-
ditional market in lots and parcels.
tional renderings for megaprojects throughout the world.
Westlake Village, built from 1964 to the mid ‘70s
Diniz’s illustrations represent a late flowering — well into the age of
on a movie ranch that straddled two counties, flooded
abstraction, photographs, primary colors and multiples, and long past
an entire valley to establish the lake that would give
it open vistas and a focal point. Diniz’s bird’s-eye
view of the vast scheme was drawn for a huge mural
that sat in the sales office. It depicts Westlake as self-
sufficient with a network of office parks and light
industry. Though the village is nestled high in spa-
cious canyon country, the boundaries of the lake,
which is central in Diniz’s distant view and in a closer
“lifestyle” view, nudged habitations and services into
denser social patterns than the traditional suburb:
townhouse clusters, communal parking, harbor-
front single lots, waterfront shopping and services.
Diniz’s overview shows how the generous distri-
bution, pedestrian piers and walkways, recreation
centers, open land and limited roadways (a model
approach to limiting infrastructure in the landscape)
could be used to give the suburb the character
of a pleasure resort. The close-up vignette strengthens
that feeling by its brilliant evocation of quaint, exotic
and modern artifice that mixes Maine, Provence and
Polynesia into a single maritime aesthetic vocabulary.
Right Carlos Diniz, Westlake Village, Boat Club, 1966.
McIntire and Quiros, engineers. Pen and ink on vellum.
Below Carlos Diniz, Westlake Village, Mural, 1966.
McIntire and Quiros, engineers. Ink on vellum.
www.modernismmagazine.com 37
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124