Art and Architecture | Los Angeles Conservancy
Home Savings and Loan, Hollywood (Millard Sheets, 1968). Photo by Larry Underhill

Architecture of the late twentieth century often reflected the influence of the contemporary art of its time.

Architects and artists inspired each other and collaborated together, from designers such as Millard Sheets integrating art into his civic architecture and Home Savings and Loan branches, to architects like Frank Gehry, who in 1976 said, “My approach to architecture is different. I search out the work of artists, and use art as a means of inspiration.”

As natural companions, architecture and art often go hand in hand in the Modern architecture of Greater Los Angeles.

Macy's
Photo courtesy Architectural Resources Group

Macy's

Wurdeman & Becket
Engineered to meet the precise aspirations of residents of Pasadena, Bullock's Pasadena (currently Macy's) is a sublime example of a post-World War II department store.
Photo by Michael Locke

Museum of Contemporary Art

Arata Isozaki
With only four of its seven floors above street level, its sunken, red sandstone-clad design is a welcome contrast to the extreme heights of the Bunker Hill glass-and-steel high rise towers.
Photo courtesy Architectural Resources Group

Norton Residence

Frank Gehry
Even among all of Venice's famed Ocean Front Walk beachfront architecture, no other house is as eye-catching as the Norton Residence.
Photo by Michael Locke

Norton Simon Museum

Ladd & Kelsey
Inspired by Pasadena's Craftsman residences, its Beaux Arts City Hall, and Streamline Moderne and Late Moderne commercial buildings, the museum was designed to blend into and reference its urban surroundings.
Photo courtesy Architectural Resources Group

Norwalk Civic Center

Kistner, Wright & Wright
William Allen
Architectural firm Kistner, Wright and Wright designed Norwalk City Hall as a one-story square steel box clad in tinted glass and panels covered with vibrant blue and green mosaic tile.
Photo courtesy Architectural Resources Group

One Park Plaza

DMJM
Anthony Lumsden
An excellent example of the glass skin system the architect developed with Cesar Pelli, it featured a non-loadbearing glass membrane with reversed mullions that served to set designs free from the constrictions of the vertical "box."
Pacific Street Townhouses
Photo courtesy Architectural Resources Group

Pacific Street Townhouses

A Design Group
A Postmodern/High-Tech complex that resembles, at first glance, a piece of massive yellow-and-white machine equipment at a temporary halt.
Photo by Adrian Scott Fine/L.A. Conservancy

Pan American Bank

Raymond Stockdale
Providing much-needed financial services to its residents, this Modern pillar of East Los Angeles' Mexican American community was designed to complement the forward-looking philosophy of its founder.
Photo courtesy Architectural Resources Group

The Westin Pasadena

Lawrence Halprin
Moore Ruble Yudell
This Postmodern interpretation of Pasadena’s beloved Beaux Arts and Mediterranean architectural traditions visually and thematically frames City Hall in the context of the city's ongoing development.
Photo courtesy Architectural Resources Group

U.S. Bank

Millard Sheets, Architectural Designer
An outstanding example of Millard Sheets’s bank designs in his home city, this elegant bank building even has an ATM building designed by his protege Denis O'Connor.

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Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. - An Initiative of the Getty

Curating the City: Modern Architecture in L.A. is part of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. This collaboration, initiated by the Getty, brings together seventeen cultural institutions from April through July 2013 for a wide-ranging look at the postwar built environment of the city as a whole, from its famous residential architecture to its vast freeway network, revealing the city’s development and ongoing impact in new ways. Major support for this project has been provided by the Getty Foundation. pacificstandardtimepresents.org.