Moby Describes Most Interesting Examples of Los Angeles Architecture

Jun 26

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While Moby may be first and foremost best known for his work in the music industry, his latest venture sees him dipping into a whole different territory. This video presents interview with Moby about unique examples of LA Architecture. He describes the most interesting LA buildings which every architecture fan should see during the visit in this most populous city in the state of California.

What is interesting Moby became interested in architecture when he was actually very young. His mother was a painter, one if his uncles was a sculptor, another one was a photographer. So in his family home there were always a lot of conversations about aesthetics. He was born in New York and most of his life he lives in lower East Side of Manhattan. He explains that New York architecture unduly is not diversified, there are only tenements, tall buildings and townhouses. But, when he came to LA he was just baffled because of the strangeness and the randomness of architecture there. He adds that there is one another characteristic thing about architecture in LA. When people go to Paris, Rome, New York, San Francisco or London they almost always know about the greatest architecture in these towns and they also know where they could find it because it is usually located near the city centers. He convinces that completely other situation is in LA, where the great architecture is hidden and it is weird and that is why he started his architectural blog.

His uncle gave him his first camera when he was 10 years old. So actually he is doing photography for as long as he is doing music. But photography was almost like fun hobby in very dilettantish way. He always wanted to be an architectural photographer but he thinks that he is not very good at it. Nevertheless in LA more important than skills are methods of searching the subject. Because, when he was really trying to be precious as a photographer he would not be able to document a lot of weird stuff.

Moby introduces Ennis house, which, in his opinion, is probably the most iconic piece of LA residential architecture. It was built by Frank Lloyd Wright in the twenties. He thinks this it the stingiest house that he has ever seen in his entire life. It is massive and it looks like an ancient spaceship from a hundred thousand years ago. Whenever people come to visit him in LA he always takes them there and the response is always exactly the same – disbelief.

Another building described by Moby is the Watt’s Towers in South-Central. He thinks that this is a part of LA that most people never go to. It is one thing that he love in LA and it makes no sense to him. Because when people look on Saint Peter’s Basilica or Empire State Building they think that these buildings are amazing but they are also not dissimilar from a vernacular perspective from the building around them. When people see things like Watt’s Towers they could think that they are completely arbitrary amazing.

The singer thinks that Villa Carlotta is an amazing apartment building because it is so dark and gothic and surrounded by a big tropical plants. It is kind like a smaller version of what the Chelsea Hotel used to be. He has no idea who is living there but the story was that Howard Hughes built it for one of his mistresses. However, he does not believe in it because it is way too big for one mistress to live there and LA people love buildings and they always have stories about them. No one is ever too concerned about whether the stories are actually historically acquired as long as they are interesting.