Take It Outside

An anachronistic exoskeleton design first conceived in 1999, resurrected in 2006, and now looming over Los Angeles’s Expo line, it’s impossible to look at the baroquely formalist (W)rapper Tower without gagging on certain circumstances surrounding its rise: an evaporating market for any office space much less the lofty double- and triple-height ceilings on offer and Eric Owen Moss’s tenure as SCI-Arc director and the inflated high six-figure salary he pocketed. (W)rapper encapsulates architecture not as autonomous form but as a succubus that extracts everything from tuition to natural resources.