Critic's Notebook: If the Vision Is Well Executed, It Could Be Grand May 24, 2005 Reprinted with permission from the Los Angeles Times By Christopher Hawthorne ... "More broadly, the [redevelopment of Grand Avenue] aims to stitch together downtown's stand- alone architectural icons -- City Hall, Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall, Jose Rafael Moneo's Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and Arata Isozaki's Museum of Contemporary Art -- with a new fabric of housing, retail and outdoor spaces." "...Related has assembled a high-powered if conservative group of designers to execute its vision, including SOM's Philip Enquist, who helped develop Millennium Park in Chicago; his SOM colleague David Childs, who has been battling with Daniel Libeskind over the design of the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site in New York; Philadelphia-based landscape architect Laurie Olin; and local architect Brenda Levin. "...It will all depend on execution, of course, and on how much leeway Related gives its collaborating architects and designers -- particularly those, such as Gehry and Levin, who can help the project reflect the fact that it is in Los Angeles and not Tucson, Minneapolis or Manhattan. God may be in the details, as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said, but in developments like this, the devil is too." Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times Education | Arts & Culture | Civic & Social | Urban Revitalization About Levin & Associates | News | Home