I was driving on the I-10 freeway in LA last week, heading from Santa Monica to downtown LA, and as I looked off to my right…there it was…the (W)rapper building. The (W)rapper is an eye-sore, a work of art, a stunning act of courage…of defiance, a beauty, a beast, a disgrace and a gem of a building. Conflicted as the city and community may be about this monolithic office structure towering over Culver City, casting criss-crossing shadows over the low slung creative offices, you must stop and admire all that it represents; a hornets nest of judgements and opinions.
The building was designed by ‘starchitect’ Eric Moss and built by Samitaur Structures, a company formed by artists Frederick and Laurie Samitaur Smith. The husband and wife couple who built much of Culver City’s arts district had one more trick up their sleeves in 2020 when the world went into hibernation and they were entitling this monstrosity. While the office world was shutting down and the narrative of death-to-office was proliferating, the husband and wife plowed forward, seeking to make their mark on her city, against all the adversarial battle cries. They were chronic ziggers when others were zagging and that’s how they’ve always been.
While the building remains vacant and yet to sign a lease, its presence in Culver City stands as a beautiful reminder to me - and to the city - to ‘go forward’ even amidst the adversity. LA and California might get drenched in the headlines with tough placement but the city and state pushes forward. This building represents that mantra to me it’s evoked a typical emotional cycle.
Life presents constant new information that summons strong emotional responses. You may receive new information and have a visceral reaction of fear, doubt, uncertainty or other negative emotions only to later reconcile and come full circle to a completely opposite and positive emotion. Usually in the heat of the initial unveiling, you can’t foreshadow that your emotions will change, but inevitably they do. When I see something that catches my eye or acquire a taste of something and I have a strong negative reaction to it, I’m often questioning myself to say “what am I missing here and what new information will make me take a completely new and opposite view point.” That’s how I felt about broccoli, that’s how I’ve felt about difficult work lessons, that’s how I felt about Dallas and now that’s how I feel about the (W)rapper and know that with time, it all comes back around for me to say “I kinda love that building!”