The renovated Music Center plaza between the Mark Taper Forum and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the Music Center complex – the plaza had been closed for twenty months and forty-one million dollars later this is it. Rios Clementi Hale Studios lifted up a sunken area of the plaza and relocated the rather grotesque “Peace on Earth” sculpture from the plaza’s fountain to a spot on Hope Street – across the street from the absurdly angular Department of Water and Power building. But the plaza faces Grand, with the iconic Los Angeles City Hall in the distance. The fountain in the center of the plaza was reconfigured and reprogrammed. The Ahmanson Theater and the Mark Taper Forum and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion were all designed by Welton Becket, the architect of the Capitol Records building and the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, and they're still here, and still unremarkable. But the new plaza is pretty cool. And of course Frank Gehry's curved and surreal Walt Disney Concert Hall is across the street to the west. This part of Los Angeles is between Hope and Grand. ~ Wednesday, February 26, 2020
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