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CULTURAL EXCHANGE GOES FULL CIRCLE
THE INTERNATIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD OF WESTSIDE VILLAGE
The end of the story returns to the beginning, to the church where the boy first dreamed of the Pyramids and the treasure awaiting him, and he knows his destiny is to return home, a changed man from the boy he was when he first set out on his quest to understand the world and himself.
– Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
This website documents the interconnectness of two towers, one that was originally constructed in the 13th century, the other that was conceived between the years of 2014 and 2017 and with a lifelong multimedia art project, which links crafts, techniques and sensibilities of medieval stained glass windows of the Great Cathedrals of Europe, to the latest aesthetic developments of high technology. Ultimately they represent my personal architectural expression of the multicultural and historical interconnectness of humanity, which further directly connects to the purpose and theme of a multimedia art project that I have been developing over several decades, which I have named The Underground Cathedral (The Routes of Civilization).
In 2005 I restored a medieval tower in the western Polish city of Wrocław, and transformed it into a multicultural arts center, wine bar and global cuisine restaurant, that operated from 2006 until 2011. Its documentation is found on this site, under the name, Abrams Tower East. The second tower, which I designed in 2014 from scratch, was constructed far away from Poland between 2015 and 2017, on top of the garage of my home, in West Los Angeles, California. Documentation of its creation is presented on the background slide show of this page.
A strange destiny, that drove me back to the roots of some of my family’s distant heritage, in Eastern Europe, had taught me profound lessons that inspired Abrams’ Tower West’s existence. The first occurred upon my initial visit to Poland, in late 1989, at the very moment that the Berlin Wall was being torn down not far away, as the country was being liberated from decades of Stalinist oppression. I had been invited to tour the country and exhibit examples of my first digital artworks during a 9-city train tour that had been organized by a leader of an underground of artists, who resisted the communist regime’s repression against free expression, under the auspices of a US Consulate in the city of Poznań. The artists who he represented nationwide played a central role in a nonviolent revolution that began in Poland and ultimately led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union two years later. A few of them had organized secretive private art galleries in their apartments, when official communist-run art galleries subjected artwork to strict censorship.
The second profound lesson was driven by the fact that my passion to transform a rare historical treasure into a hybrid of medieval and contemporary architectural sensibilities met with still existing post-communist regulations, which was further complicated by an extremely uncooperative private owner of the property. Thus, both lessons taught me the virtues and the privileged opportunity awaiting me, which I would have never previously thought of achieving, literally on my own home terrain.
If I had one great regret, it was that the ultimate vision I had for the restoration of a medieval tower in Poland, including replacing a badly deteriorating pyramid-shaped ceramic tile roof with glass, as I envisioned, and fought for to the bitter end, never saw the light of day. Nor, for that matter, did a beautiful illumination of the edifice that I had planned for during evenings. The first nickname I had chosen for the tower, La luz (“The Light,” in Spanish), had become the inspiration, which became linked to my earliest artworks, in the luminous ancient medieval art medium and craft of stained glass. Nevertheless, gorgeous 3D renderings that I had commissioned to be drawn by a Polish architect of my unrealized vision for the building’s final restoration are presented on this site.
Further, the numerous successes and achievements that are documented on this site from that profound experience led to a crazy idea that began to form in my mind, thanks to having brought back home with me complete architectural drawings of the original historical building, as well as the 3D renderings of my 21st century vision for what a medieval guard tower, known in Polish as Baszta, could have become.
THE LOCATION
But where and how would this become possible? When my father passed away shortly after my return home, this question was answered. Where I would finally realize this dream could not have possibly come any closer to home than right in front of it, on top of a two-car garage. I imagined what I could do to add a 21st century element to still another unique period piece: the house design of a classic 1950s mid-century modern style, that my father had both designed and built with both his hands and those of his father, who was a building contractor.
The house was not at all like anything that my grandfather had ever constructed. As the concept reflected my father’s own visionary design sensibility, it was quite advanced for its time, situated on a hill, featuring wall-to-wall windows, both in front and back. Built on the last available vacant lot on the street, the modernist design was completely out of step with more traditional single-story dwellings throughout the neighborhood, that were constructed nearly ten years earlier, after the end of World War II.
The sleek contour of its rooftop is reminiscent of what is known as space age “Googie” coffee shop design style, for which my father later became recognized. A classic still-existing example is Norms Coffee Shop, where my father conceived the interior and kitchen plans. The first Norms opened in 1949 on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood. Still in business today, it is regarded as a historical landmark of LA. [spacer height=”20px”]
The house is up on a hill, the garage in front of the house on the street below. The rooftop of the garage is the same height as the floor of the house, yet, despite its easy access, it was a completely wasted space. Hence, a brainstorm suddenly struck me: why not build something on top of it? For that matter, why not build a contemporary tower directly on top of the garage, with a glass pyramid roof, as I had envisioned for Baszta?
As was intended for the tower I partially restored and used in Poland as an all-in-one art gallery, mini-cinema, culture venue, restaurant and wine bar, the top deck of the new building would have a 360 degree view of the city, though from the vantage point of being situated in between the ocean and downtown LA, with the mountains in the background.
As I excitedly contemplated a contemporary tower right where I had been raised as a boy, most striking of all was the realization that had strange destiny not led me to Poland and to apply my artistic sensibilities to restoring and making use of a medieval tower for artistic and cultural purposes, this possibility would have never occurred to me!
California dreaming, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. All I had to do was be open to it and let the influences flow that had inspired my life and further expanded my vision, while living so far away for so many years.
I thought, why not even project images and/or animations onto the exterior walls, just as I had intended for Abrams’ Tower? With the aid of new technology, the illumination of buildings had evolved as well, yet, it had still remained, for the most part, a function of holidays, mainly Christmas and Halloween. Why not make a year-round multimedia experience? Celebrate the holidays, the changing seasons, celebrate art and architecture, celebrate life! As long as it doesn’t interfere with the neighbors’ peaceful evenings, why not add beauty, and a sign of life at night, to a dark residential street?
Only, it could not be a commercial venture. For this reason, unlike Abrams’ Tower abroad, it would not be a restaurant or wine bar. The events I would host would be private. Whatever I did, no matter where, one thing became obvious: when asserting a personal vision and engaging in personal expression in any public atmosphere or arena, there are inherent risks involved and challenges to face.
As my brainstorm became an immense headache of confronting sometimes absurd regulations and requirements of the LA Building and Safety Department, I often thought about the Bulgarian artist, Christo and his French wife, Jean-Claude, who championed public art projects, which inevitably confronted the obstacles of laws, regulations and bureaucratic systems ranging from wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin with fabric, to building a 26 mile long fence trespassing the private property of 59 ranchers in northern California. I wondered whether by growing up in a former communist country, Christo had developed a degree of cleverness and tenacity that became a major asset in the West. I now pondered whether I had earned a degree in the Polish school of hard knocks that would become an asset to me back home.
THE PURPOSE
It became my will to engage a quiet neighborhood consisting of people of various nationalities and races, in establishing a unique community-friendly place. I came up with the name: “The International Neighborhood of Westside Village.” Westside Village, which was established in the 1940s, was described in 2005 by the Los Angeles Times as consisting of “a kaleidoscope of housing styles.”
Unlike New York or the European city centers, where I had previously resided for so many years, I found myself back in a sprawling urban terrain, where there exists an excessive dependency on transportation by car. In Westside Village, people rarely walk, unless they are accompanied by their dogs, for there is almost nowhere else to go other than a few local supermarkets, convenience stores, pharmacy, fast food restaurants, cigar shop, Starbucks, deli, bank, candy store and two dive bars. Neighbors rarely talk to, let alone see each other. And yet, among the few people I came to know upon returning to Westside Village, I discovered not only residents representing a potpourri of nationalities and cultures, but musicians, a documentary filmmaker, a woman who makes chocolate sculptures, a sommelier and a professional belly dancer. LA being a city saturated with diverse talent, who knows what else exists in Westside Village? Who knew, for that matter, that someone of rare experience from many years of life abroad would return to the place of his childhood and build a multimedia tower?
With Abrams’ Tower West, I decided to create a Meeting Place that was to become an elaborated extension of Abrams’ Tower in Wrocław, Poland.
THE CONCEPT
I began by making some simple sketches, one of them the first image of the background slideshow. Later, my Catalan architect friend in Barcelona, Xavier Nieto (see his page by clicking here), came up with several concepts, two of them shown here. I subsequently hired a 3D renderings designer (see 3 slide shows of the renderings by clicking here). Together we tried many visual concepts of lighting, with a see-through pyramid to also be alternatively translucent, whereby I could project artwork right through its surface from the inside. We worked on this together almost daily by e-mail for four months. The renderings became a virtual experiment of nighttime architectural illumination.
In fact, the idea could be traced back to my childhood, when growing up in the house I was now planning to transform dramatically. As a boy, each December I would line the walls and ceiling of my bedroom with colored Christmas lights. When I discovered the wonders of ultraviolet lighting at Disneyland, I created a fluorescent galaxy on my ceiling. Prior to Fourth of July, I bought fireworks, which back then were legal to purchase in nearby Culver City, took them apart and with the powder created patterns of sparkling fire on a shopping center parking lot. Years later this became the inspirational key to my art in the light-emitting medium of stained glass. When I was later introduced to computer graphics, some of my compositions became reminiscent of fireworks, the same connection I made upon witnessing the stained glass rose windows of the great cathedrals in Europe.
My aim has always been to arrive at a unique style of expression, which at the same time bridges universal themes, aesthetics and sensibilities of cultures and times in history. These were the same universals applied by the Egyptians in creating the great pyramids as is the art of sacred geometry. Like fingerprints, the patterns of subway systems are completely different but often look remarkably the same. And here, an exploding “firework” of millions of maps of subway systems from around the globe becomes an illuminated pyramid in the night sky.
The idea of literally recreating a medieval European tower in southern California had been scratched; however, I wished to keep the concept and theme intact. The first consideration was to what degree I should exercise artistic license to design a building as I chose without any formal background in architecture. In risking this, I conceived the 3D renderings without any knowledge of what would be acceptable according to city regulations.
At that point, I surveyed other possibilities that preceded my ambitions and nowhere could the eclecticism of residential architecture be more interesting than where I was, on the west side of Los Angeles, all the way to the seaside of Santa Monica and Venice. The one example that stood out the most, prior to my departure for Europe in 1987, is the home of architect, Frank Gehry, in Santa Monica, which was completed 10 years earlier. Gehry essentially encased a nondescript post-WWII house with industrial materials constructed of odd shapes and at odd angles. The structure of the original house is seen through windows and open spaces of the new surrounding structure. From the completion of his work on his own home, which upset some of his neighbors, he rose to international fame.
I began to drive around taking photos and found everything from entire houses covered with broken tiles a la Antoni Gaudi’s architecture in Barcelona, to a house with an artificial zoo in the front yard and yet another that is decorated with old kettles. One example that I discovered just a few blocks from my home appears to be a bit on the lines of my own concept. Known as “The Petal House,” it includes what appears to be a pyramid roof that has opened up, like the petals of a flower.
I finally decided on a design of simple shapes, while retaining the aesthetic of a tower in the spirit of Baszta, those shapes serving as a blank screen for projecting images and animations at night.
OBSTACLES AND SOLUTIONS
What would most notably change is the materials used to construct the tower, its dimensions and its height. There would be no brick walls, since they are not used in warm climate southern California residential architecture. Other practicalities and regulations would force me to come up with creative solutions, as there would be many unanticipated hurdles to overcome. Just as in Poland, this would prove to be true, even in open-spirited California, in the land of the American Dream.
The biggest dilemma to solve was the glass pyramid roof. Only after beautiful 3D renderings had been completed, at which point I hired a local architect, did I find out that the city would impose a height restriction that was several feet lower than I desired and just less than two-feet lower than what I absolutely required.
With very little area to walk beneath a pyramid roof, the sides would remain far too low for standing upright. The solution I arrived at was to raise the lowest point of the ceiling from the perimeter of the deck, while lowering the angle of the pyramid roof, which also blended better with the low-sloped lines of the house rooftop that was a relic of the 1950s.
Another problem was that the weight of a glass pyramid on top of a small two-story building constructed above a garage was prohibitive; it was time once again to talk to the mother of invention.
So I hired an awning company to construct a gazebo-type pyramid roof top consisting of a metal frame covered with a translucent white synthetic material. The ceiling would become an overhead screen for projecting images and animations, whereas the sides would be open for a panoramic city view.
Thus, unfinished business of my grand cultural exchange mission abroad came full circle, as a beacon of light in the heart of an old LA country road, that has become an architecturally evolving, microcosmic melting pot of the world.
Click here for the further visual documentation of Abrams’ Tower West
