‘A Gas-Guzzling Villain’s Lair’: Welcome to LA’s Grotesque New High-Rise
18th March 2023
A chunky grey staircase thrusts out from the side of a new office tower in Los Angeles, lunging towards a rail line before jerking back on itself and lurching up the building in jagged twists and turns. It crashes into a warped lattice of bands that wrap around the glassy hulk, swooping past corner windows that jut in and out like broken teeth. This is (W)rapper, “an outrageous creative office tower”, in the words of its leasing agents, set to “reawaken the Los Angeles skyline”. It is also the bombastic tombstone of a bygone era, a carbon-guzzling monument to a time when architectural ego trumped the interests of people and planet.
It is, of course, endemic to writers for proglodyte publications that they equate their preferences with ‘the interests of the people and planet’. That arrogance is their signature characteristic. Kind of like vegans.