Eye Level Pasadena

Mar 18th, 2007 by Jill

Construction on California just east of Wilson

on 18 Mar 2007 at 9:53 pm1Rattling the Kettle

This is going to be the new Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, and it’s going to be very, very ugly.
on 19 Mar 2007 at 6:30 am2Jill

You think so? Bummer! I *love* the Caltrans building downtown (in fact, it’s my favorite downtown building), so I was pretty excited to learn that the same architect was designing this building.
on 19 Mar 2007 at 4:06 pm3Rattling the Kettle

There are some drawings of the design online if you dig around. The NY Times had an article about “new LA design” with a slideshow a couple of months ago, but the slideshow isn’t in the archived version. But it’s all, you know, so typically modern, with weird angles jutting out from every direction and lots of glass and cantilevers and this element that element blah blah blah, but what it doesn’t have is a sense of actually fitting into the rest of the campus, which is quite lovely.
on 19 Mar 2007 at 6:54 pm4Jill

Yeah, that description sounds like the Caltrans building downtown! Sounds like we’re talking about the same architect. Here are some pictures of the Caltrans building:
http://flickr.com/photos/jillslivingroom/sets/72157600010433708/
on 20 Mar 2007 at 6:23 am5Rattling the Kettle

Yep, that’s the theme. The problem is that the Caltech campus has a slightly different aesthetic than downtown.

Construction on California just east of Wilson