By Diedre Johnson
Daily Commerce Staff Writer
An attempt by Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Woo to build innovative low-income housing in Hollywood has swept up architect Craig Hodgetts into one of the community’s hottest political issues. And the normally arts-oriented designer is proud to be a part of it.
“It is one of the most meaningful things I could be doing personally,” he said.
The Fairfax resident is currently one of three candidates whose designs are being considered by the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Councilman Mike Woo for Woo’s controversial $2.3 million, 40-unit low-income apartment complex on the corner of Franklin Avenue and La Brea Boulevard.
The controversy over the project began in November, when the city chose to use the Franklin property for low-income housing.
Residents in Woo’s district have strongly opposed the construction of low-income housing on the site.
“Usually the whole political process has occurred before the architect is chosen,” Hodgetts said.
According to a Woo spokesman, the councilman knew MOCA was soliciting new plans as part of an update and retrospective of the ’40s and ’50s Case Study houses — an experiment in residential architecture that brought industrial innovations to housing — and Woo proposed that the museum, while scouting for architects for the contemporary part of the exhibit, also look for a suitable proposal for the Franklin housing.
A seven-member panel, consisting of representatives from MOCA, the CRA and the councilman’s staff, will eventually choose an architect for the project from among the exhibit entries.
Hodgetts’ past work has been varied. He is perhaps best-known for his set designs for the motion pictures “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence,” “The Man Who Fell to Earth” and other art-oriented work. (He recently designed some interiors for the Pacific Design Center’s Westweek that leapt into relief when viewed through 3-D glasses.)
He recalled being interested in automobile design and theater before moving to California from New York to teach design at the then-new California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.
“I was one of those people who just couldn’t find myself until I was past 30 — that’s when I went to architectural school,” he said.
In school his interest in the arts, engineering and theater all came together with his desire to work on social problems.
“It (architecture) deals with lifestyles … it deals with people’s perceptions, their emotions, hopes, aspirations, dreams for the whole city,” Hodgetts explained.
Today, he and a group of architects work out of a small Santa Monica warehouse. It is filled with intricately designed models from Hodgetts’ past, present and future projects.
Together they have worked on a shopping center in Little Tokyo; the original plans for the remodeling of the Third Street Mall in Santa Monica; and the Long Beach Metro Rail; but Hodgetts said he has often been cut out of major-league projects after the conceptual stage.
“It’s a tough competition because people want to buy a brand name,” he said, referring to developers’ preference for larger architectural firms.
The low-income housing for which his designs are being considered is not Hodgetts’ first experience with that type of housing. He worked on the Settlement House in Columbus, Ohio, a multicultural, multipurpose low-income shelter in the late ’70s, the first of its kind in Ohio.
“It has never brought an upscale query but I’m proud of it,” he said.
The idea of designing livable, affordable housing is not new in Los Angeles, dating back at least as far as the ’40s, when Los Angeles-based Arts & Architecture magazine sponsored the Case Study project. Participating architects designed low-cost housing using the steel and glass construction techniques that had already revolutionized commercial and industrial building.
MOCA resurrected the Case Study concept by planning a new exhibit utilizing the research from the old Case Study houses.
“It is housing with a social agenda,” said Hodgetts.
Originally, he said the plan was to have six architects create designs for the project, but the timing wasn’t feasible.
“With all the controversy involved we would have never gotten the project off the ground,” he said, referring to the recent opposition to the plan by area residents.
Hodgetts attributed this basic opposition to the inability of the city to see the need for low-income housing in all areas.
“Housing for disadvantaged people shouldn’t be second-class housing or a superimposition of middle-class values on people who have a different agenda,” he said.
“What’s unique about this is that these architects are taking a fresh look at apartment design; it’s a follow-up to the Case Study program, which resulted in what is now standard California architecture,” said Perla Eston, CRA Director of Housing.
She explained that each architect in the program had been teamed with a developer to design an apartment with the needed modern amenities.
The CRA and MOCA will select the design for the Woo project in June. A construction date for the project has not been set.
In the meantime, Craig Hodgetts plans to continue his “both ends” approach to architecture.
“Any time there’s a conflict, there is an opportunity for you to design a solution, a solution that is good for both parties. The result is impetus for the birth of a new project,” he said.