 Anchoring Inglewood's Civic Center Complex is its eight-story City Hall. The building's design is very much in keeping with Luckman's work beginning with Lever House which established the modern office 'Tower in a Park'. Consequently, the building is set back from Manchester Boulevard. The only signpost marking the entry is Tony DeLap's Skedans sculpture. Cars were housed discretely in the adjacent parking structure half buried in the landscape, and the building was accessed from a garden either at grade or via an upper level ramp. It has many of the hallmarks of the International Style. Even though the building is organized with a ring of offices around each floor plate, each facade is treated differently to respond to its orientation. The building incorporates a bevy of technical features then considered state-of-the-art: it is constructed of poured-in-place concrete, the windows are set back with concrete 'bris soleil' or sunscreens, tinted glass, and (typical of the time) it was fully air conditioned throughout. All of the buildings are tied together by a landscape designed by landscape architect Robert Herrick Carter. It features expansive green spaces and multiple pedestrian malls and bridges, including elevated walkways that help facilitate foot traffic. Inglewood's Civic Center is a successful rethinking of the city's governmental core, combining a verdant landscape with monumental concrete buildings to create a flowing and vibrant urban center. 

Inglewood City Hall

 Adjacent to City Hall is the Library. One of the most unique features of the building is its organization and circulation flow. The front facade would naturally be on Manchester Boulevard, the main street. Luckman fliped it to the Plaza side and then placed the cars and service below the building. This forces everyone to go through the Plaza and proceed upwards to the second level. There are other features emblematic of International Style Buildings of the era. Each elevation is different reflecting the building's orientation. Circulation elements (stair and ramp) are visually expressed and are bumped out of the facade plane. The functional elements such as the Lecture Hall are treated as separate buildings. The building is also made of poured-in-place reinforced concrete, a technique that requires precise wooden molds to be made. It was the material of choice for many significant public buildings of the era, most notably Boston City Hall. It was very innovative at the time allowing the architect to create very sculptural facades with a tremendous amount of precision. It is not used as widely today, probably because of the expense and level of craftsmanship required. Using it for the Library allowed Tom Van Sant to create The Written Word very successfully incorporating an artwork into the elevations. 

Inglewood Public Library

 Skedans is Tony DeLap`s site-specific commission for Inglewood`s Civic Center. Funded from the National Endowment for the Arts Art-in-Architecture Program it was an early precursor to contemporary public art efforts. Skedans refers to a Canadian Indian village in the Queen Charlotte Islands of the North Coast of British Columbia and was a tribal government site. DeLap frequented the area and was inspired by ancient trees and totems rising from the shallow waters. He brought the form and inspiration to Inglewood`s government center. DeLap worked with the Civic Center complex architects Charles Luckman and Associates to design a centerpiece monument for Inglewood City Hall. Skedans is a 50` tall upright column, standing on a 10` tall and 20` wide octagonal base that housed an early flow fountain. 

City Hall

Skedans

Tony Delap talk about his fountain sculpture "Skedans".

Skedans was created in conjunction with Charles Luckman's master plan for the Civic Center in Inglewood.  The artist talks about the collaboration now that it is a generation later and reflects on how the sculpture has impacted his body of work.

In Incomplete Conch Shell sculptor Jack Zajac draws inspiration from the natural world. Blending traditions of surrealist and romanticist art, Incomplete Conch Shell bisects the marine shell’s central chamber with blunt geometry. The marble form is displayed on a circular pedestal on the west lawn of the Civic Center. Organic and abstract, the curvaceous work sits in strong contrast to the geometric architecture of City Hall.

Incomplete Conch Shell was purchased for the newly opened Inglewood Civic Center with funds made available through the Art-in-Architecture Program of the National Endowment for the Arts.


Incomplete Conch Shell

 Inglewood Forever an artwork designed for the lobby of the Inglewood Police Department, sends the viewer on a journey of discovery. Graeff's composition knits the Centinela Adobe, the Forum, Randy's Donuts, vintage police cars, fallen officers and palm trees in a unified field of Inglewood experience. The art encourages those visiting the Police in person to recall the City`s landmarks and landscapes, and keep a positive feeling for the City and police. Given an assignment to reflect Inglewood's history and police accomplishments, Graeff sought to instill pride in the City's rich visual culture. He presents the Police Department as heroes making the city safer. He depicts police in and around landmarks to draw a parallel, placing a police car and motorcycle in the foreground to balance legacy with resources. The clouds are meant to add a dreamlike quality, parting in the middle of the painting, to let the Space Shuttle make its historical passage through Inglewood. The artist's blue and orange palette draws on southern California retro style and relaxed ambience. Inglewood Forever is Graeff's largest public art commission to date. 

Inglewood Police Department Lobby

Inglewood Forever

 Self Evident (for Sally Hemings) explores American family diversity through a dress. The skirt of 18th century garment holds the family tree of Sally Hemings, her half-sister Martha Wayles Skelton and Sally`s master and father of her children, President Thomas Jefferson. The family tree shows Sally Hemings and Martha Wayles Skelton had the same white father, Captain John Wayles. Martha married Jefferson and Sally became a slave in the President`s household. Martha, dying after childbirth, made her husband promise not to remarry to spare their children her experience of a cruel stepmother. A widower, Jefferson went to Paris to negotiate on behalf of the United States taking Sally as his enslaved nanny. Their intimacy produced a pregnancy in France, where slavery was illegal and Sally could have been a free woman. Hemings returned to America after making Jefferson promise their children would be free at age 21. They had several children born in the United States. Some Hemings/Jefferson descendants became famous writers, musicians, war heroes and politicians. Descendant Frederick Madison Roberts was elected California`s first black Assemblyman. Both Sally Hemings and Martha Jefferson worked for a better life for their offspring, using methods available to them at the time. Through Self Evident Ellison explores how actions in the household and statehouse intersect to affect lives and liberty. The bronze, cast at the Walla Walla Foundry in Washington State, is made from a plaster mold based on the artist`s extended studies in the costume collections in Jefferson`s Monticello, Virginia estate. The sculpture was inspired by Monticello Wakes, an opera about Sally Hemings created by Garrett Fisher and Tim Appello with set and costume design by Ellison. Monticello Wakes premiered at Loyola Marymount University with the school`s professional choir performing in Inglewood`s lecture hall in October 2015. Inglewood City Council proclaimed April 16, 2016 as Sally Hemings Day to honor the sculpture dedication and a great American leader. 

Self Evident (For Sally Hemings)

 Bookmark @ The Inglewood Public Library is an interactive temporary artwork that addresses the transition that libraries throughout the country are going through as new books are added to collections to replace older books and reading transitions from printed matter into e-books and electronic media. Like many libraries, the Inglewood Public Library had decommissioned books. This artwork repurposes the 10,000 decommissioned books and creates a participatory 'work in progress'. The architect describes Bookmark as a "way of paying our respect to the books that have enlightened the lives of many and as an act of placemaking to strengthen the connection between people and the places they share. Patrons are invited to help finish building / writing the final chapter for 10,000 books by partaking in the formation of the 'writer's blocks' book furniture and the mesh fabric of the tossed 'crumpled page'. Patron participation will not only mark the readers place + contribution of this project at the Inglewood Public Library, but it will also help to leave a celebratory mark for the respective writers of these books forever. 

Bookmark at Inglewood Public Library

 Inglewood Stories, a three-story montage by artist Michael Massenburg, combines images of Inglewood's past and present blended in atmospheric painted passages. Inglewood`s diverse generations and ethnic communities are depicted next to images of historic streetcars and NASA`s Space Shuttle that travelled through Inglewood streets in 2012. The 1936 postmark and cancelled stamp in the top right of the artwork support a handwritten letter from an Inglewood resident to President Theodore Roosevelt. Thematically uniting the artwork is the writer`s central question to the President: are we family? Massenburg selected photographs, postcards and letters from the Inglewood Public Library Special collections to accompany his original images. 

Inglewood Stories

The artist talks about how he came up with the idea for the mural, selected the site in the library, researched the history of Inglewood and how he decided to encompass all generations and all the people of the city.  Among other things, he included text from a letter from a resident to Theodore Roosevelt, historic street cars from Market Street, even the space shuttle's trip through Inglewood.  He also talks about how he fabricated the piece.  

 Inglewood's twenty-nine-acre Civic Center contains its City Hall, main library, a fire station, a police facility, a parking garage, and a public health complex in a square bounded by La Brea Avenue, Florence Avenue, Manchester Boulevard, and Fir Avenue. Completed in 1973, the Civic Center was designed by Charles Luckman Associates to revitalize Inglewood's civic and business district. Its plan aimed to increase mobility in the area for both pedestrians and cars, and create landscaped open space in the heart of the city. The complex's most impressive buildings are its eight-story City Hall, standing atop a wide, two-story base, and its four-level library building, which is supported on tall columns. Both are Brutalist in style, with their monumental concrete bulks serving as both structure and ornamentation. The library includes an interesting mural-in-concrete called The Written Word, created by sculptor Tom Van Sant and looking like modern rock art images rising up a tall column. All of the buildings are tied together by a landscape designed by landscape architect Robert Herrick Carter. It features expansive green spaces and multiple pedestrian malls and bridges, including elevated walkways that help facilitate foot traffic. Inglewood's Civic Center is a successful rethinking of the city's governmental core, combining a verdant landscape with monumental concrete buildings to create a flowing and vibrant urban center. 

Inglewood Civic Center

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