CNA Park Place Tower, now the Los Angeles Court Tower, Los Angeles, Calif., 1971
Koreatown, Los Angeles
1971
Langdon & Wilson
The CNA Park Place Tower was the first building to be designed with a surface made of completely reflective glass. Designed by Langdon & Wilson to house the CNA Financial Corporation, the building begins at the base with curving, granite buttresses that lead the eye up 19 stories of mirrored glass. The glass gleams and ripples, reflecting nature in such a way that the building almost blends in with its surroundings.
Wayne Thom’s photograph captures the building in a crisp, saturated state, with the color-blocked panels of glass appearing like a painting. Thom, who had never photographed mirrored glass before, realized that he had to approach photographing the building in a different way. Standard practice is to photograph a building with the sun behind the photographer, shining onto the building. Thom had to photograph the CNA building with the sun shining behind the building and directly onto an adjacent building, then reflecting back onto the mirrored glass of the CNA building. On a stormy day, Thom recalled in an interview for this exhibition, Thom raced to the building to photograph it just as the storm was passing, so that the muted clouds were behind him and behind the CNA building was a bright, blue sky. The resulting photograph is dreamy, colorful, and authentic.
Thom entered this photo into the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Architectural Photographers Invitational and won first prize, with the judges praising Thom’s take on architectural photography. As stated in the PPG Architectural Photographers Invitational brochure, one judge voted for Thom’s photograph because he saw it as “an honest statement about a building in relation to its surroundings.” Thom acknowledged the significance of this photo in his career, stating in an interview with Christopher Hawthorne, “That picture put me on the map.”
References:
1973 PPG Architectural Photographers Invitational, Brochure, (Pittsburgh: PPG Industries, Inc., 1973), Wayne Thom Collection, USC Special Collections.
James P. Cramer and Jennifer Evans Yankopolus, ed., Almanac of Architecture & Design, 6th ed., Atlanta, GA: Greenway Communications, LLC, 2005, 665.
Christopher Hawthorne, “In Wayne Thom’s revelatory show, a generation of L.A. buildings gets needed attention,” Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2015.
“Los Angeles Superior Court Tower,” Los Angeles Conservancy, web.
Wayne Thom Interview with USC ARCH 404 Students, March 2018.