04/13/08
Text: Christine Noblejas
Photographers: Frèdèric Chaubin
Dressed to the nines in serious eyewear, cantilever United Nude shoes, and monochrome outfits, the LA architecture crowd came out of their studio caves to attend the opening of the Storefront for Art and Architecture's Pop-Up Gallery, featuring the photographs of Frèdèric Chaubin. The traveling exhibition was first shown last year at Storefront's New-York headquarters, a landmark Steven Holl designed gallery, renowned as a platform for artists and architects defying convention. Frederick Chaubin, editor of French magazine Citizen K, has chronicled the space-age oddities built in the Soviet Union during the last two decades of the Cold War lockdown behind the Iron Curtain. Photographs are accompanied by a timeline of events that allude to the intellectual and political backdrop of each work, which span from 1967 to 1988.
The show is marked by sci-fi geometric monoliths that seemingly crashed onto earth, conspicuously wedged into steep hillsides and cliffs. One image displays stacked, narrow bridges criss-crossing like a gigantic Tetris game gone wrong splayed between highways located at two different levels of rugged topography. Likewise, the grand circular atrium of Druzhba Sanatorium sits atop the Golden Beach Hills in Crimea, overlooking ocean vistas with angled windows niched into a double ring façade. It's eerie to see such technologically heavy-handed architecture cantilevering over the disarming ease of sunbathers and rolling waves. Commenting on the Druzba Sanatorium, Chaubin alludes to the nuclear arms paranoia of the Cold War saying, "When this was built, the Department of Defense in America thought this was some kind of rocket launcher. The secret service was very much afraid of it, but in fact this is just a summer camp."
Its no wonder that in America, Cold War architecture is synonymous with the hyper-protection architecture of missile silos and fallout shelters, but it likewise produced a caliber of eccentricity similar to works exhibited in the show. Julius Shulman's photos of 1960-1980's works by John Lautner and Buckmisnster Fuller draw parallels with Chaubin's in the appearance of cliff sites and unconventional geometries. These sci-fi diamonds in the rough, built in their respective monotonous landscapes of American suburbia or Socialist propaganda have finally found a common home in Los Angeles. Don't miss this shoe-box sized collection of artwork before its vanishes back to the cosmos. Insider Tip: Across from the street from the exhibit, you'll see a large shrubbery concealing John Friedman and Alice Kimm's design for Falcon's Lair- a super hip, indoor-outdoor bar that exemplifies work by one of L.A.'s contemporary architecture firms. Might as well complete the night and make a toast to offbeat Communist Architecture.
