Wainwright, ever astute, is right to be suspicious of the impact the “once-radical beach boys” have on the field half a century in. The author may have been assured by an extended visit to Southern California Institute of Architecture, the long and narrow school/ clubhouse where their legacy— cantankerous, mythopoetic and domineering—remains a guiding light.
Yet distance has a habit of rendering some things clear and others invisible. On the ground, I’m happy to report that the young blood is hardly under the thumb of any generation preceding theirs. Breaking with the past, then and now, is the one true historical constant in Los Angeles.
The local clientele has far less patience for swagger now than it did when audacity was high and land prices were low. As the city comes of age, flights of fancy have taken a backseat; preservation, ADUs, adaptive reuse, and mass transit infrastructure have all presented new opportunities for correcting the oversights of the past. Their work is not as tempting to pass around in magazines, but it makes for a better urban fabric.