Month: July 2012

C’mon in, the water’s fine. Really.

Dancers splash in the Arthur J. Will fountain’s new “membrane pool” during Thursday’s dedication ceremony.

It’s big, it’s wet and it’s already making a big splash as the first segment of Los Angeles’ Grand Park opened this week.

The 6,200-square-foot pool in front of the restored Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain has only a quarter-inch of water, but it’s likely to be a huge crowd magnet, says Jim Garland, president of Fluidity Design Consultants, which oversaw the fountain’s restoration and expansion.

“It’s going to be awesome,” says Garland. “There’s a similar pool around the Millennium Park Fountain in Chicago, and kids roll around in it, and people just love it, and it’s probably the most popular fountain today in the United States.”

But under the sleek, nonslip surface and its inviting jets of water, an elaborate system of machinery and maintenance workers will be hustling around the clock to keep that expanse—technically known as a “membrane pool”—clean.  The pool’s filtration system was kept separate from the one used for the fountain itself, Garland says, because health codes set a higher standard of cleanliness for interactive water elements.

Every drop will circulate every half-hour through an underground filtration and disinfection system that will kill bacteria with ultraviolet light and chlorinate the water. Security guards will patrol to ensure that no one abuses the pool area or mistakes it for a bathtub. And the crews that monitor the fountain at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion will manually test for cleanliness at least three times daily.

Barefoot in the park: Dignitaries like Eli Broad are among the first to take the plunge after Thursday’s ribbon-cutting.

“It’s about a 10 minute test—we just take a water sample and drop in a tablet,” says Keith McTague, director of building services and chief engineer at the Music Center. “We’re mainly doing it as a check and balance on the filtration system, which is automatic, and so that the readings are documented. But if we have to do it more often, we will.”

These safeguards are crucial because, while the historic Will Memorial Fountain was designed to keep people out of its waters, the adjacent membrane pool was conceived as a way to entice kids and grown-ups alike into getting wet.

“Nobody was sure there would be money for an interactive area like that,” Garland says. “But…we all fought to keep it in.”

Much of the inspection and testing of the system will rest with the Department of Public Health environmental health unit which, among other duties, acts as the county’s “fountain police.”

Chief Environmental Health Specialist Bernard Franklin says the Grand Park membrane pool is different from the roughly two dozen other interactive fountains throughout the county. Most of those, he says, are “splash pads” in which water spurts from a dry deck surface—not like Grand Park, where jets are placed in an ever-present layer of water.

In fact, Franklin says, the Grand Park pool will be the last of its kind in the county after September, when revisions to the California Building Code and the California Code of Regulations will prohibit pools of standing water in fountains that encourage public interaction with the water.

Franklin, who helped author the new rules, says that while the Grand Park pool will be well maintained, others with a lesser design or oversight could generate potentially unhealthy conditions. “Pools like these can be big collectors if you’re not careful,” he says. “Dirt gets in them, pigeons and ducks come around them, people try to use them in ways they aren’t supposed to.”

To that end, camera monitors and round-the-clock security will be in place to discourage mischief and enforce rules that will, among other things, ban camping and skateboarding in the park.

The results promise to be well worth it.

As the designer Garland puts it: “At night, you’ve never seen anything like it. It’s going to be magical.”

After the official dedication, the real fun begins for the kids.

Posted 7/26/12

Here’s a bright idea for the park

When Grand Park opens in the downtown Civic Center later this month, it won’t just be the show-stopping fountain and collection of internationally-inspired garden plantings that will have eyes popping—and tongues wagging.

Check out those benches.

Perhaps not since “festive federalism” stamped its exuberant, mid-‘80s color palette on the 1984 Olympics has such a comment-worthy color explosion rolled into L.A.

While most of the park itself remains out of view behind temporary chain-link fencing swathed in green mesh, a pair of its vibrantly-hued benches recently popped up outside the 2^nd floor entrance to the Hall of Administration, where they’re visible to everyone passing by on the busy pedestrian corridor to and from Starbucks.

And everyone, it seems, has an opinion.

“Awesome. It’s fun. Different,” said Adrian Taghdiri, who’s interning in the County Counsel’s office.

“They’re cute, but it’s a little bright,” said Frances Espinosa of the Assessor’s Office.

“Beautiful!” said Zella Scott of the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s office.

“A little bit too loud for me. It’s like something out of the 1960s,” said Jesse (Jay) Luna of Public Health.

“Generally, with pink you think of breast cancer awareness. It’s different, I guess,” said MacKenzie Smith of the D.A.’s office.

“Will the boys not sit at the girls’ benches?” wondered Renee Rose, also of the D.A.’s office. “You’ll have to be very in touch with your masculine side not to be intimidated.”

“I like them, especially on a bright, warm, sunny day like today,” said attorney Ludlow Creary, passing through after an appearance in Federal Court. “They’re very inviting. I think it’s very L.A., but that’s not a bad thing. Something like this works in L.A.”

So what color are those benches, anyway? Officially termed magenta, the after-lunch crowd passing by this week offered its own interpretations, ranging from “kind of like a fuchsia, but with a little deep purple in it”  to “hot pink!”

Technically a variation on the color known as Pantone 219C, the hue was toned down and “richened” by the park’s designer, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, and by JANUS et Cie, the firm hired to produce the custom-designed furniture that will adorn the 12-acre expanse. (In its original form, the color is also associated with Pantone Barbie and is a dead-ringer for “Lights” in Essie’s “Poppy-razzi” nail polish line. In other words, Elle Woods would love it.)

Even though it exudes an unmistakable sense of Southern California fun, the color choice has a far-from-frivolous role. It’s a key factor in establishing the new park’s identity, taking inspiration from a variety of influences around the world, including the green seating at Paris’ Tuileries Gardens.

“We obviously wanted to really create something iconic with the furniture,” said Tony Paradowski of Rios Clementi Hale. “Our idea was to have a floral quality throughout the year.” No matter what plants were in season, “the furniture would always be this kind of bloom-like color sensation throughout the garden.”

In addition to 26 freestanding benches and 41 wall-mounted benches, the park will offer furnishings that can be moved around by patrons: 120 café tables, 240 café chairs and 40 lounge chairs on the lawn.

Using unsecured furniture is “definitely a different model for Los Angeles, but in other cities this has been around for quite a while,” Paradowski said, citing New York’s Bryant Park and Hyde Park in London, where folding fabric chairs are rented out in nice weather. Grand Park’s around-the-clock security should help keep the chairs from walking away, as will a plan to tether furnishings together after-hours, he said.

As for the color, Paradowski thinks most people will come to love it, although he acknowledges that the benches “definitely ask for opinions.”

“We worked with the construction crew out there, and a lot of them said, ‘Wow, why’d you pick pink for the chairs?’  I think a lot of them are still scratching their heads.”

Posted 7/12/12