Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles, Calif., 1977
Los Angeles, CA
1977
John Portman Partnership, Architects
John Portman designed the glass and concrete Bonaventure with an “atrium hotel” style that he popularized throughout the country, stacking four mirrored cylinders around a tall central atrium sitting atop a concrete base. Portman created a futuristic experience for hotel patrons from the bottom to the top, designing glass elevators that reached up to a revolving cocktail lounge with views of downtown Los Angeles, pedestrian skywalks that connected the hotel to surrounding buildings, and covering the building in shimmering surfaces from the glass walls to the reflecting pools in the lobby.
The Postmodern hotel was a symbolic addition to the 1970s Los Angeles skyline, which was beginning to dabble in skyscrapers after removing a decades-old limit on building height. In its height and design, the Bonaventure Hotel anticipated the future of Downtown. The Bonaventure also became a Los Angeles icon, as it served as a location for multiple films, television programs, and commercials that made the Bonaventure recognizable around the country.
Wayne Thom thoroughly photographed the Bonaventure Hotel’s cylindrical towers, displaying the building’s unique additions to Los Angeles and the field of architecture. While he photographed the building, Thom found it difficult to find his way around the futuristic hotel. In an interview for this exhibition, he stated: “I was doing that project for a week, and I’d still get lost!” He worked methodically to ascertain the perfect moment the light most accentuated the shape of the building, and captured his most iconic image of the building at 5am on November morning, positioned off the Fourth Avenue exit of the 110 Freeway. This portrait appeared on Progressive Architecture magazine’s March 1978 cover, and depicts the hotel proudly standing in front of what was, at the time, still an open and low-lying landscape.
References:
Blair Kamin, “John Portman, whose atrium hotels brought sparkle to cities, dies at 93,” Chicago Tribune, December 30, 2017.
Paul Goldberger and Robert M. Craig, John Portman: Art and Architecture, (Atlanta: High Museum of Art / University of Georgia Press, 2009), 74.
Shelby Grad, “Downtown Los Angeles skyline keeps evolving,” Los Angeles Times, web.
Christopher Hawthorne, “In Wayne Thom’s revelatory show, a generation of L.A. buildings gets needed attention,” Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2015.
Wayne Thom Interview with USC ARCH 404 Students, March 2018.
“Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites,” Los Angeles Conservancy, web.