Scheme Works

February 13, 2013 9:00 am

They call LA the City of Dreams: all those doe-eyed hopefuls yearning to grace the silver screen, only to grace the valet stand.

But there’s another meaning — as in, the architectural wonders that were dreamed, but never built.

And damn, the renderings sure are pretty.

Feast your eyes on Never Built: Los Angeles, a just-Kickstarted retrospective of fanciful renderings hatched by the A+D Museum.

Never Built Los Angeles

In other words: photos and models of daring projects — soaring bridges, dramatic LAX terminals — that nearly became realities, but were jettisoned thanks to community intransigence or municipal roadblocks.

To wit: the Causeway, a water-based freeway stretching from Santa Monica to Malibu, which was five years in when it was abandoned by the legislature.

Never Built Los Angeles

And: Frank Lloyd Wright’s domed and high-spired sports club in the hills of Runyon Canyon.

All in, Never Built will include 30 individual pieces ranging from schematics to animated examples to fully-constructed monorails to an eleven-foot LEGO tower.

The exhibit opens this July and runs until September, and if you help them get to $50,000, they’ll be able to add more works.

After that, quoth the Talking Heads: same as it ever was.

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