The whimsical Binoculars Building — pictured below — on a quiet, mostly residential stretch of Main Street in Venice, in Los Angeles, was designed by architect Frank Gehry back in the 1980s.
It’s a local landmark and Gehry’s last building to be constructed in Los Angeles until the development of the Walt Disney Concert Hall two decades later.
In the interim, Gehry created the Guggenheim Bilbao and became one of the world’s foremost “starchitects” if not its greatest living architect.
The Binoculars Building was initially the home to the legendary advertising agency Chiat/Day (now TBWA/Chiat/Day), which grew too big for the space years later and vacated for much larger offices in nearby Playa Vista.
Since then, the building complex has been home to many creative tenants including Google. The giant binoculars, by the way, are by the artists Claes Oldenberg and Coosje van Bruggen.
It’s still surprising that the building is not more widely known.
GLOBAL GRAPHICA 