When Things Are Really Looking Up

0

Skyscrapers have always held a fascination for local architect Scott Johnson; he’s worked on dozens of designs for towers during his 35-year career. Now, he’s written a book on them called “Tall Building: Imagining the Skyscraper.”

But, ironically, Johnson wrote much of his book in his studio, which doesn’t exactly have a penthouse view. “Yes, it’s on the ground floor,” Johnson, 58, admitted. “But it’s column free. It’s got skylights and it’s a great working environment.”

Johnson, who’s the design partner at Johnson Fain in Los Angeles, said unlike other coffee table books or histories on the skyscraper, his book is an attempt to bring in several topics of note in today’s design community, such as integrating sustainable design and green technology into skyscrapers, and branding tall buildings with famous architects.

In case you’re wondering, Johnson is no towering fan of L.A.’s tallest buildings, saying the city has mostly “lazy” skyscrapers that lack imagination or pleasing aesthetics. “They’re flat and they lack color or original landscaping because there’s been little public pressure here to do so.”

Not Mickey Moused

The Happiest Place on Earth looks a bit different after midnight, when the crowds are gone and the maintenance crews come out. Brett McKee, owner of American Ramp Systems in Torrance, got a look at Disneyland after midnight recently when he installed a temporary wheelchair ramp at the theme park’s Plaza Inn restaurant on Main Street, near the entrance to Tomorrowland.

McKee started the job just after midnight, and worked for more than two hours with his son, Patrick, to install the steel ramp. He said the experience was surreal the theme park was fully lit and filled with workers; it was not the quiet ghost town you might imagine. As the McKees worked, a song from “Snow White” played over the loudspeakers.

“There are as many workers there at night as there are at daytime,” said McKee, 58, who first visited Disneyland in 1957.

He added that navigating through the park in his truck was strange. “Driving down the street through Tomorrowland was quite an experience.”

Fire and Water

When Naida Begeta, the owner and designer behind apparel company Kao Pao Shu, first moved to Los Angeles, she couldn’t have been happier to be living near the Pacific Ocean.

But, alas, bad luck seems to follow her.

Not long after she and her husband, Italian commercial director Marco Schillaci, moved into a home in Malibu, a brush fire ignited in Coral Canyon.

“I thought the fire was beautiful,” said Begeta, 28. But the couple soon realized they had to flee, and the fire eventually destroyed the house. They now live in Santa Monica.

Begeta, unfortunately, has seen refugees before. She was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and learned to sew in classes given by humanitarian groups during the Bosnian war.

The fire wasn’t the end of the fashion designer’s run of bad luck.

In January, after taking a month off to sail from the Cape Verde Islands to Trinidad, the mast broke on the family’s sailboat. Fortunately, a German research ship rescued them in the middle of the Atlantic, though they were forced to stay at sea until mid-February when the ship docked.

The date? Friday, Feb. 13.

“After all that, I said, ‘I am not flying back home on Friday the 13th,'” Begeta said.


Staff reporters Howard Fine, Daniel Miller and Maya Meinert contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].

No posts to display