Jon Jerde often said “the communal experience is a designable event,” and he proved it over and over during a 50-year-career. The architect, who died this week at 75, created ersatz downtowns, really elaborate malls with vast garages. His most famous project was Universal CityWalk, a hilltop shopping-and-entertainment center in Los Angeles, completed in 1993. Herbert Muschamp, the longtime architecture critic of The New York Times, admired CityWalk’s showbiz vitality. Jerde, he famously wrote, was more likely to be nominated for an Oscar than a Pritzker.
But Jon Adams Jerde, FAIA, was one of the most successful architects of the last half century, and he achieved that without building mansions or other indulgences of the rich. Architects, he said, “were trained to be in service to the elite. I wanted to build for ordinary people.” Craig Hodgetts, the Los Angeles architect, who worked on several Jerde projects, said, “Jon’s vision rarely, if ever, coincided with the norms of architectural practice, and as a result he has been denied entry to the pantheon of Master Architects. I know he was frustrated by this, though he was never persuaded to turn his back on his basic passion–making places for people rather than monuments to power. He was, I would venture to say, a transformative designer who nearly single-handedly dragged developers, city planners, and even some architects back into the streets, the plazas, and the places that he loved and emulated.”
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