Item 18 - Appeal Application Nos. 2023-02 and 2023-03 for Cabrillo Town Center project

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HISTORIC RESOURCES ASSESSMENT JULY 2022 TORN CENTER PLAZA L C A $ANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA J /`�` organized with a regular grid. There are no visual surprises or complexities. Careful proportions, the studied craft of simplicity, and the inexorable regularity of repeating elements are its character -defining features. Mies had to fireproof the steel frame with concrete, so the metal we see on the outside of the building is not the real structure but rather a veneer simulating the structure. The aesthetic desire for a certain appearance inevitably overcame the philosophical desire to express everything truthfully. Like Le Corbusier, Mies lifted the Seagram Building off the ground to form an entry lobby and to create a sense of the outdoors flowing through the building. He also set the building back from the street and apart from its neighbors on a public plaza, treating it as an isolated object in space rather than as an infill in a continuous streetline of buildings. Mies had a pure vision of his glass boxes, uncorrupted by the visual clutter of the city around them. If he could not build on a campus like ITT, he would carve out a little park. So where once only major public buildings like town halls or churches stood apart from the city in their own plazas or town squares, now private corporate headquarters were elevated to the same status. One Miesian building set back from the continuous facade of buildings stands alone as a jewel; an entire street of them set back in their plaza radically alters the urban setting. Many admired the way in which these plazas opened up the cramped, crowded cities. When a large number of Miesian buildings in their plazas clustered together, it became a source of civic pride. Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta, Hong Kong; the city began to exude the image Le Corbusier envisioned: gleaming, hi -tech centers of commerce and industry, unencumbered by the past and looking boldly to the future. However, as the future unfolded these curtain -walled boxes posing as corporate headquarters, office parks, government buildings, apartment buildings, schools, and shopping centers caused many to question whether an abstracted ideal vision is preferable to a more nuanced approach, designing differently for different locations. To these architects and critics "Less is a bore." The Modernist vision looked windswept and barren, devoid of the hustle and bustle, visual and sensory richness, and spatial enclosure of traditional urban streets. In the 1950s and early 1960s, even as Modernism was sweeping across America, they sensed that it had lost sight of art or beauty in favor of constructional efficiency. They were well aware of the virtues of a rational constructional system, but the work did not express the highest cultural aspirations of what was now the most powerful nation on earth. These architects were known as the New Formalists or Neo-neo-Classicists. As the name suggests, many turned to traditional Classical ideas for inspiration. They explored various ways in which the basic frame and cover box could be elaborated or even decorated to provide a more elegant or commanding presence. After all, the Classical temple was based on a rational grid of columns and beams, just like a Miesian glass box. Many New Formalists, including Edward Durell Stone, Minoru Yamasaki, and Philip Johnson, played out Modernist variations on Classical forms. Pdiy °found (07/21/22) 18 - 786 10/3/2023 15