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In the December 20, 2010, issue of the New Yorker, Paul Goldberger profiled Eric Owen Moss, the 76-year-old UCLA alum who has made Culver City's Hayden Tract his architectural playground since he started building there in the early 1990s. The above photo was taken by Richard Barnes for the article.
Observed Goldberger,
There is a wound-up tension to Moss’s buildings, as if their pieces might suddenly fly apart in all directions at the push of an unseen button. “The Umbrella” has a huge corner canopy of twisted glass and steel that looks as if it had crashed into the building and broken apart...There is a compelling energy to these odd angles, and a sense of incompleteness. These buildings don't fade into the background. They force you to look.
The article also credits Moss' patrons -- Frederick and Laurie Samitaur Smith, the developers who funded the Hayden Tract buildings. Frederick Smith says in the article, "I wanted to build a community where architecture was integrated into the place." In 1986, he walked into Moss' office and found him reading T.S. Eliot, "whereupon he decided that Moss was his man."
The article continues:
With 20 projects completed -- from conference rooms to block-long building -- and six more about to start construction, there is enough of his architecture to define the neighborhood, and the discordant forms come together to make a more coherent whole that I ever thought they could. Moss comes off not soe much as aggressive as ingratiatingly curious. You feel that he designs by wondering what it would be like if you made a building triangular at one end and rectangular at the other....
Here's the whole article.
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