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Greg Goldin
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Sam Lubell
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Never Built Los Angeles Hardcover – 11 Nov. 2013

by Sam Lubell (Author), Greg Goldin (Author)
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Never Built Los Angeles explores the ‘what if’ Los Angeles, investigating the values and untapped potential of a city still in search of itself. A treasure trove of buildings, master plans, parks, follies and mass-transit proposals that only saw the drawing board, the book asks: why is Los Angeles a mecca for great architects, yet so lacking in urban innovation? Featured are more than 100 visionary works that could have transformed both the physical reality and the collective perception of the metropolis, from Olmsted Brothers and Bartholomew’s groundbreaking 1930 Plan for the Los Angeles Region, which would have increased the amount of green space in the notoriously park-poor city fivefold; to John Lautner’s Alto Capistrano, a series of spaceship-like apartments hovering above a mixeduse development; to Jean Nouvel’s 2008 Green Blade, a condominium tower clad entirely in cascading plants. Through text and more than 400 colour and black-and-white illustrations drawn from archives around the U.S., Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin explore the visceral (and sometimes misleading) power of architectural ideas conveyed through sketches, renderings, blueprints, models and the now waning art of hand drawing. Many of these schemes – promoting a denser, more vibrant city – are still relevant today and could inspire future designs. Never Built Los Angeles will set the stage for a renewed interest in visionary projects in this, one of the world’s great cities.
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  1. Print length
    376 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Distributed Art Publishers
  4. Publication date
    11 Nov. 2013
  5. Dimensions
    30.48 x 3.18 x 22.86 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    1935202960
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1935202967
  8. See all details
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Product description

From the Back Cover

Never Built Los Angeles explores the what if Los Angeles, investigating the values and untapped potential of a city still in search of itself. A treasure trove of buildings, master plans, parks, follies and mass-transit proposals that only saw the drawing board, the book asks: why is Los Angeles a mecca for great architects, yet so lacking in urban innovation? Featured are more than 100 visionary works that could have transformed both the physical reality and the collective perception of the metropolis, fr

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Distributed Art Publishers; 1st edition (11 Nov. 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 376 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1935202960
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1935202967
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 30.48 x 3.18 x 22.86 cm
  • Customer reviews:

About the authors

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  1. Sam Lubell

    Sam Lubell

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    Sam Lubell is author of ten books on architecture for Phaidon, The Monacelli Press, Metropolis Books, and Rizzoli. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Dwell, Wired, The Atlantic, Metropolis, Architectural Record, Architect, The Architect's Newspaper, Travel + Leisure, and other publications.

    Lubell has co-curated the exhibitions Never Built Los Angeles (A+D Architecture and Design Museum) and Never Built New York (Queens Museum), and taught at Columbia University GSAPP and Syracuse University School of Architecture.

    See more on the author's page
  2. Greg Goldin

    Greg Goldin

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    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Greg Goldin is the author most recently of Never Built New York. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, living at first in suburbia, next in the geographic center of the city in a neighborhood with two early Schindler houses and Gregory Ain's Dunsmuir Apartments. Those buildings inspired his interest in architecture. After many years as a political reporter, he jumped ship and became the Architecture Critic at Los Angeles Magazine, a twelve-year stint that led to the book Never Built Los Angeles (Metropolis Books, 2013) and the exhibition Never Built Los Angeles, which premiered at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles, in July 2013. He was the recipient of a coveted Getty Research Institute grant for Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. in 2011. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter, where he continues to unearth untold architectural tales and unbuilt architectural projects.

    See more on the author's page
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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
23 global ratings

Top review from United Kingdom

Ewout Vandeweghe
5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 January 2015
Verified Purchase
great collection of illustrations !
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Top reviews from other countries

Isabelle Jolly
5.0 out of 5 stars Never Built Los Angeles
Reviewed in the United States on 14 August 2013
Verified Purchase
This is a great book for those of you who are interested in history, architecture, imagination, transit, parks, amusement piers, theaters, and the plans for them. The book is divided into sections for each of the areas. Some of the ideas are old, some are quite recent. Both are fascinating as it makes a reader wonder what LA would be like today if some of them had been accomplished. Many of designers are well known.

I live just out of LA, so I know the areas discussed in the book, and can imagine the results if the great ideas hadn't been squashed for one reason or another.

Each item has one or more pictures, and a description of what was planned. Some of the plans are faded, but most of the original drawings can be studied.

There is a small biography in the back of the book.

It is printed on heavy slick paper without a dust jacket. The picture on the jacket is from an idea for LAX which turned out to be impossible to handle.

The book is about 9 by 12 inches, and weighs about 4 lbs. It is something you want to sit at a table to read. I recommend it highly.
6 people found this helpful
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Ursiform
5.0 out of 5 stars A glimpse of what the LA area might have been
Reviewed in the United States on 28 November 2013
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This book accompanied an exhibition that was held at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum. After reading about plans for the exhibition in the LA Times, I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign that helped fund it. It was an interesting exhibition, although constrained by the size of the museum. This book provides a more expansive treatment of the topic, although without the models and large format plans of the exhibition. So there is something lost and something gained.

The theme is projects that were proposed for Los Angles, but never built. Some of the lost opportunities seem like real losses. Some are more neutral in impact. Some were never realistic. And a few seem better never built. (Different readers will bin the projects somewhat differently, I'm sure.)

One annoyance is the typewriterish font. I understand the aesthetic reasons for choosing it, but I find it neither pleasing nor easy to read.

While this is not a perfect book, it is a great resource for lovers of LA-area architecture. There are many books that cover what was built, and what has been lost. This book shows us what might have been built.
2 people found this helpful
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Judy R.
4.0 out of 5 stars I saw the show but don't like the book
Reviewed in the United States on 4 January 2014
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A fascinating look at Los Angeles history, but not at all well displayed in print. Print layout is dense and not pleasant to read. Considering all the architects and grapic artists involved in this project, you would expect a better exhibition book.
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Broadsheet
5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful walk down L.A.'s boulevard of broken dreams
Reviewed in the United States on 4 September 2013
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"Never Built Los Angeles" is a beautiful walk down L.A.'s boulevard of broken dreams. Graphic layout is excellent and the short, pungent essays are good reads. The authors don't pull punches. Not every scheme for Los Angeles deserved to be built, but many did. I came away with a fresh contempt for blinkered bankers and myopic planners.

On the downside, a book this big needs a full table of contents up front, and really needs an index. The lack of an index is frustrating if you're interested in individual architects, which I was. I also would have liked to see photos of some of the atrocities and banalities that were built instead of the visions. They're described in the book but not shown, no doubt because that would have increased the size of an already weighty volume. Maybe a gallery could be posted on a web site or added in an e-book.
4 people found this helpful
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Silver King
5.0 out of 5 stars What Might Had been in Los Angeles
Reviewed in the United States on 11 November 2013
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Great book on unrealized architecture in Los Angeles I'm aware of only other book that deals with unrealized projects to this extent.
That book is Unbuilt America. I wish that books would be done on new York and Chicago. Stanley Tigermann did a book of the Tribune Tower Competition in the 1920s but it is limited to only the unrealized projects for that building . Robert Stern covers some
some unrealized skyscrapers in his series of books on the history of New York architecture. Never built Los Angeles covers projects from the practical to the never could be built.in any practical sense. This book is for anyone interested in unrealized architecture.
One person found this helpful
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