Exhibit of LA buildings that never were

Wired reports on a nearly complete Kickstarter to mount an exhibit of grand and glorious LA buildings that were never built, including the design for LAX shown above:

Wired: What is it with Los Angeles and mega scale architecture?

Goldin: Los Angeles had room to grow, with few geographical limitations, except the Pacific Ocean. All that open space engendered a spirit of wide imagination, and the two fed off each other. Los Angeles has also always been a place to jettison the past and begin anew, and from the beginning the city developed a reputation for embracing originality and reinvention. The happenstance of early aviation and aerospace and the creative, sometimes over-the-top spirit of Hollywood, only further fueled the imagination. Everything seemed possible.

Documenting the Never-Built Dreams of the City of Angels [Wired/Tim Maly]

• [aperturehead]

  The recently-opened mind-boggling boondoggle ROBERT F. KENNEDY SCHOOL in Los Angeles was built for a heart-warming $600 million tax dollars. It would have been nice to split up some of that money and revisit some of these “buildings that never were” (and maybe actually build a couple of them) – Los Angeles stopped being designed by architects around 1973. It’s now designed by vast committees. Another heart-breaking architectural story is the planned multi-billion dollar FARMER’S FIELD super-stadium eyesore in downtown LA, which will increase traffic and displace thousands of residents – I love these “never-built” designs, though.

• [efergus3]

  There was that German guy with the weird moustache who loved really big buildings. Are we sure that he’s REALLY dead?

  • [aperturehead]

    Tom Selleck is still alive, but I don’t think he’s German

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  It looks the old Jordan Marsh building at Shoppers World in Framingham, Mass.