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AKA: Music Center of Los Angeles, Taper, Mark, Forum, Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, CA
Structure Type: built works - performing arts structures - theatres
Designers: Becket, Welton D., and Associates, Architects (firm); Welton David Becket (architect)
Dates: constructed 1966-1967
Overview
WA-born architect Welton D. Becket oversaw the planning of the Los Angeles Music Center and designed its constituent theatres in the mid-1960s. At the time, this massing of civic amenities together to form a perfoming arts center was viewed as a way of expressing Los Angeles's cultural maturity. Another important arts building, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art #1 was erected at this same time using a similar Classcially-influenced Modernist vocabulary.
Building History
The 739-seat Mark Taper Forum was one of three large cultural facilities in the Bunker Hill section of Downtown Los Angeles designed by the prolific Welton Becket and Associates. In conception, it rivaled that of the contemporary cultural center, Lincoln Center in New York, NY.
Building Notes
Artist/interior designer Tony Duquette (1914-1999) and sculptor Jacques Overhoff (b. 1933) created two works of art displayed incorporated into the Taper Forum; Duquette created an mosaic for the lobby wall and Overhoff produced a large relief that sheathes the buildings circular exterior.
PCAD id: 12720
