ok, so to be clear: my including buildings in my oddball architecture blog is in no way an endorsement of what the building’s current use or utility might be.
if i include a picture of a butcher shop i’m clearly not endorsing butcher shops.
if i include a picture of penn state i’m clearly not endorsing sex abuse scandals.
and by including a picture of a scientology building i’m not endorsing scientology (truth is i know next to nothing about scientology except that they have some celebrity members and some cool buildings and a founder who apparently was a science fiction writer. oh, and they apparently believe the earth is being fought over by space aliens. and i hear they have some sort of test that involves holding tin cans. that’s as much as i know).

so, todays building is some sort of scientology building, which you might be able to figure out due to the GIANT SCIENTOLOGY SIGN on the front of the building.
what i love about this building is, basically, that it’s a giant blue castle. from the early 20th century. and that it’s possessed of a whole bunch of really ornate and interesting metalwork and stonework details.
and that it’s a giant blue castle.
has it always been blue?
who decided to paint it blue?
that seems like it would take a lot of work.
and then what happens if you decide you don’t like blue painted castles?
i’m assuming that at some point the owners had a friend who had a whole lot of blue paint just lying around and they thought, ‘well, maybe we should
paint our castle blue?’
that’s my assumption anyway.
or, possibly, it’s camouflage for when the castle turns out to be a flying spaceship and it flies away and people cant see it against the sky because it’s blue.
these are all reasonable assumptions.

oh, as i was taking pictures a security guard came out very concerned as to why i was taking pictures of the giant blue scientology space alien castle.
him: ‘this is private property’.
me: ‘sorry, i didn’t see any signs’(because, well, there aren’t any. but i digress).
him: ‘what are you doing?’
me: ‘going around l.a taking pictures of buildings.’
him: ‘for what?’
me: ‘i have an architecture blog.’
him: ‘oh. uh, ok.’

oh, a last thought in the form of a question: you might notice that all of the windows are covered up with white window shades or curtains. it’s l.a and the weather’s nice and sunny, so, uh, why are all the windows covered up with shades or curtains or both?

moby

in the sort of almost middle of hollywood is the magic castle.
it is, as the name sort of suggests, a little castle.  where they perform magic.
‘they’ being, in this case, magicians.
i, in this case, am good at stating the obvious.
not to schill for the magic castle, but it’s great.
and aesthetically?
architecturally?
it looks like a magic castle.
which sort of makes sense, as it’s a magic castle.
it makes less sense as it’s baking in the sun beneath the blue sky and palm trees across
the street from a park where spiderman smokes crack and in the shadow of what is, i believe, the worlds
largest japanese restaurant.
a scary ominous victorian sort of castle sucking up light and radiating darkness in the middle of the afternoon
on a cloudless day.
which, fantastically, makes no sense at all.
i like buildings that don’t make a lot of sense.
or that purport to make sense but then end up being absurd when you look a little closer.
like a fantastic spooky magic castle in the shadow of palm trees.

-moby