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The Best Showroom in Southern California
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, An Excerpt from the LA Times
 
Along Ventura Boulevard we run into, well - a box. "A
glass box," Stork corrects. And so it is: SAAB of Sherman Oaks, a pristine example
of "High Modernism," the so-called International Style that once dominated
and then, as all triumphant styles do, took its knocks. Tom Wolfe lampooned its
pretensions savagely in "From Bauhaus to Our House": "So what if
you were living in a building that looked like a factory and felt like a factory,
and paying top dollar for it? Every modern building of quality looked like a factory."
  It
had to do with the International Style's pretensions, that a building could change
people, not the other way around. "Most of the 'classics' of Utopian planning
have come to look inhuman or even absurd; they have ceased to work," said
Robert Hughes in his book "The Shock of the New." "Who believes
in progress and perfectibility any more? Who believes in master builders or formgivers?"
International Style down; Googie up! How very ironic. But, weirdly enough, after
spending a few minutes in this austere SAAB cube, you see that, in its own
cool, tailored way, it is, as Stork says, "a fun building."
  There's
a hidden little atrium with carefully tended plants that gives an almost theological
bent to the question, "Is it inside or outside?" The design fits together;
space flows. Not only that, but this 1947 structure is still functional, Stork
says. "On a given month they're no worse than third-largest [in sales among
regional SAAB dealers]. To me it's the best showroom in Southern California.
It's not one of these showrooms that's set back 200 feet from the road, 12 rows
of cars in front of it."
Stratton, meanwhile, has her own point of reference: "I grew up a block and
a half from that building. It's almost impossible to see it through a grown-up's
eyes. I just see it as this beautiful building I walked by on my way to school
every day." |
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