A New Light On Los Angeles Architecture
Expanding City Standards With Caroline and Cyril Desroche
- Interview: Wes Del Val
- Images/Photos Courtesy Of: ©Caroline & Cyril Desroche
If you've visited Los Angeles for even just a weekend you'll recognize almost all of what you see among the 632 pages of Caroline and Cyril Desroche's new book, Los Angeles Standards. But the French architects’ portrait of the city strays far from the conventional sightseeing tours we’ve long been accustomed to—no Hollywood Sign, no Walk of Fame, no Chateau Marmont, or LACMA lamps. No beaches, canals, or Maps to the Stars. Instead, photography acts as a catalyst for understanding the built environment. Documenting the everyday architecture and urban planning which visually defines L.A.’s unique cityscape, the Desroches have elevated the ubiquitous, allowing us to see and appreciate this magnificent city anew.
In 2005, after the completion of a two year study about the densification of L.A., the Desroches decided to survey the city’s urban landscape in all its expanse. They spent the next ten years between Paris and Los Angeles, working in Frank Gehry’s L.A. studio for six of them. Stopping their car frequently and taking prodigious notes, the two showed that when defined and grouped together, its building and design typologies are utterly fascinating. From mini-mall signs and billboards to micro-architecture and parking lots, freeways and streets to stucco boxes and stilt houses, the Descroches narrowed the myriad of L.A.'s structural types into 15 categories and then filled page after page with examples of each—seriality and the grid have never more effectively served a book's subject.
When it comes to architecture and design, it often takes an outside eye to identify vernacular patterns and present them in a fresh and convincing way. When it's done effectively it should be put inside the covers of a book. When it's done masterfully, non-architects and non-designers will want to own and open it for years to come. The Desroches’ outside-inside perspectives (as foreigners visiting and observing L.A. and then living there full-time) and commitment to their vision has made this one such book.
Since returning to Paris five years ago, the Desroches opened their own office, named Fairfax (inspired by the avenue in L.A., naturally), and they’re currently working on the interior design of DJ Étienne de Crécy’s Paris recording studio and the Chengdu Bridge Market in China. Towards the end of 2020, not long after Los Angeles Standards, published by Poursuite, was shortlisted for the prestigious Paris Photo / Aperture First Photobook Awards, I spoke with the duo about their influences for the book, avoiding stereotypes, and their deep love for the City of Angels.
Wes Del Val
Caroline and Cyril Desroche
In the book, we don’t get explanatory words about the project from either of you, but instead the only text is a short afterword from Frank Gehry. Can you explain what led you both to Los Angeles to begin with and specifically work in his studio?
The original concept for the book was to have no text. Then we decided to introduce each part of the book with a few short sentences. Frank Gehry proposed to write the afterword, which we found appropriate since in it he talked about us and presented our work within the context of when we were working for him.
We had always been fascinated with L.A., which led to us working on our French book and in 2005 we decided to move there a week after it came out. We both quit our jobs and arrived looking for new ones. We had a list of desired architecture firms and Gehry Partners was at the top. We had interviews, showed them our new book, and they hired both of us. At that time they were working on the Fondation Louis Vuitton so the timing was perfect, two Frenchies showed up at their doors!
How did you arrive at the categories you wanted to document?
In our daily life driving around we used to note all the addresses of what we could use for the book, each time we saw a new billboard or new micro-architecture we wrote it down. As part of our notetaking, we also indicated the best time of the day to get appropriate light for a photo, as well as the street cleaning schedule to make sure there would be no obstructions the day of the shoot. At some point we had hundreds of notes, in notebooks, on Post-Its, and they were everywhere. We arranged them all over a large map of L.A. we had on our wall and started to organize shooting.
Since we knew what we would shoot we did not have to choose amongst a lot of photos. We quickly started a mock-up so we always knew what was missing and what we could change for better. We did all that for several years. Then in 2008 we started to categorize them into typologies, and we realized that we had too many sections. The task was impossible, or it would have taken all our lives. Some sections were harder to document than others, for instance Parking because so many don’t look like typical parking structures, so the final edit was driven mostly by our subjective choices. We reduced the target to what we considered to be the quintessentials of the city. We wanted to show the current condition of the city and didn’t want it to be an account of L.A. in the 50s or its stereotypical Googies, even if we like that heritage, too.
My definition of what is “so L.A.” kept changing as I looked through each section of the book and I still can’t pick one which I’d say is the quintessential L.A. design trope. Can you?
It keeps changing for us, too! You really have to consider the whole book.
I can’t look at this project without thinking of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi’s great series of informal shots of Las Vegas’s distinct built environment as they were researching their seminal Learning from Las Vegas. What were your inspirations as you went to this length to capture constructed typologies of one city?
Yes, that work is an inspiration for a lot of architects, and for sure it was for us since we’re so sensitive about American architecture. But the most direct inspirations were Ed Ruscha’s and Hilla and Bernd Becher’s work.
How do you expect L.A. to change in the next 40 years? How will the book age?
Los Angeles has to continually balance between these three elements: the green space (private and public gardens, trees on sidewalks, etc), the car space (streets, freeways, and parking) and the building space. In 40 years the city will probably be much denser and higher, which should be helpful for the car/congestion elements, but to the detriment of the green spaces because today’s urbanism rules allow people to build another structure on their garden. The balance is delicate, and we didn’t even mention the word “water,” so it’s difficult to answer.
What was your impression of Los Angeles before you arrived, and when you left?
Taking a car everywhere everyday as part of the L.A. routine really allowed us to live its urban pattern. We had our first child in LA. Most importantly, living there we got to really discover American culture.
Wes Del Val is an editor and writer who lives in New York.
- Interview: Wes Del Val
- Images/Photos Courtesy Of: ©Caroline & Cyril Desroche
- Date: March 3rd, 2021
