The new and tipsy-looking Samitaur Tower on National Boulevard in Culver City begs the question; what is it for? Unless you know before you see it that the architect is Eric Owen Moss. Count on him to rattle expectations of what a building can be. Five-stories of bent steel, partly wrapped in semi-sheer acrylic, the tower overlooks a stop on the light-rail Expo Line planned to extend from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City. This latest construction by Moss is at the corner of Hayden and National and can only be viewed from the outside, for now. It opens to the public in early 2011, a year or more before the Expo Line is expected to roll through the area. It would be easy to mistake the tower for a traffic-control center with an open-air staircase cutting through the middle. The fact is, the building is a mixed-use structure with two amphitheaters, five open-air platforms that suggest observation decks, and indoor spaces for restaurants and displays. The acrylic wrapper allows light to shine through it. Passers-by might see a sculpture exhibit silhouetted on one level and a cocktail party on the next. In his office a few blocks from the site, Moss sits at his cluttered desk with a sculpture of a knight in armor at one end and a copy of ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s exploration of self-mastery, at the other. Moss seems to like answering questions about his industrial-looking construction. He is a teacher and the director of the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in downtown Los Angeles. His office is filled with photographs and models of projects that make perfect sense, once he describes them. One prize winner is a proposal by Moss and his team to revitalize part of downtown Los Angeles by, among other things, turning the concrete-bedded L.A. River into parkland. (See the Palisadian-Post feature, ‘Building Like It’s 2106′ February 1, 2007). ’It’s O.K. to ask whether or not it’s a building,’ Moss says of the Samitaur Tower. ‘It doesn’t follow conventional formulas for commercial or residential structures. You could call it an urban park.’ The developers, Frederick and Laurie Samitaur-Smith, see the tower as a prototype and hope to build others like it along the train line. ‘They experiment with questions, like, ‘What is a contemporary building? How is it used?” Moss says of his clients, who have been redeveloping the area near the tower for more than 20 years. ‘They are interested in architecture that shows a progressive point of view.’ Moss, who lives in Pacific Palisades with his architect wife, Emily Kovner, and their two sons, isn’t predicting a break with convention for his own town where single-family dwellings and low-rise condominiums prevail. Samitaur Tower is part of a plan for other lifestyle options. ‘The idea is to use architecture strategically, to create a certain kind of neighborhood,’ Moss says. In this case, one designed with a light-rail transportation system included. ‘There will be a good transportation system,’ Moss says, without a doubt. ‘Over time, it will improve.’ If it takes longer to complete than anyone thinks it should, ‘it’s not all that dire,’ he says. ‘L.A. is at the beginning of its history. It’s an adolescent.’ For a creative thinker, to design buildings for a young city has its advantages. ‘Where things are not working, there are venues for re-imagining and trying unusual things,’ he says. ‘Samitaur Tower is an example of it.’ Other structures in the works are also a response to the Expo Line, he says. One is a high-rise condominium at the corner of Jefferson and La Cienega, with ramps leading from street level down to the train stop. The proposed building rises 200 feet above ground in a neighborhood where most structures are not more than 45-feet high. ‘L.A. has expanded laterally,’ says Moss, who was born and raised in Los Angeles. ‘Higher density construction allows people more options for the way they live. If it comes with a reinterpretation of freeways and trains, we might have a very different kind of city.’ Downtown Los Angeles is a step in that direction, but Moss has other ideas. He thinks about high-rise schools with five athletic fields ‘stacked’ on top of one another. He is working on a plan for a high-rise urban farm. ’Why truck food from Fresno?’ he wonders. ‘People could buy organic vegetables, grown in their neighborhood.’ Where others see train tracks, Moss sees a city of the future.
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