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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Monumental Armenian Museum in Glendale

Glendale’s Armenian American Museum could become the signature project for local firm Alajajian-Marcoosi Architects Inc. The proposed cultural facility’s futuristic design may become to Glendale what Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall has become to Los Angeles: a visual landmark anchoring its downtown in the imagination of people internationally. The state has contributed a $4 million grant toward establishing the institution, with the remainder of its $30 million price tag to be gleaned from private donors. Partners Aram Alajajian and Sako Marcoosi, who run Alajajian-Marcoosi Architects on Arden Street in downtown Glendale, have committed many hours to the project. With Phase I approved by the Glendale City Council on April 17, the architecture studio will begin work on Phase II in mid-June. “That will give us entitlements to work at a faster pace,” Alajajian said. Marcoosi added that the project breaks ground in late 2019, beginning with substructures. Construction starts in 2021 for six to eight months, with an eye toward a 2023 completion date. For Alajajian, who grew up in the shadow of Mount Ararat, the project proves particularly poignant; an opportunity to give back to his own culture in Glendale, home to the largest number of ethnic Armenians outside of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, from where Alajajian originated. “The Armenian American Museum is envisioned as a world-class cultural and educational institution that will celebrate and promote an understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Armenian-American experience,” said Glendale Community Development Department Director Philip Lanzafame. The museum’s renderings reflect Alajajian and Marcoosi’s ethnic lineage, with a 60,000-square-foot monolithic mass incorporating a texture and flavor of Mount Arafat while also referencing the Glendale-adjacent Verdugo Mountains. “We wanted to make it simple yet impressive and monumental,” said Alajajian, explaining that narrative elements will be embedded in the structure, such letters of the Armenian alphabet on each interior wall. “This is not only following the function, this follows the fiction.” Added Marcoosi, an Armenian originally from Iran, “We (invested) a lot of research on symbolism and culture but we wanted to present it in a new sense, a modern way.” Alajajian promises to deliver an engaging destination “not just for Armenians but (with traveling exhibits) will activate the cultural life of the Valley.” Nuts and bolts According to its principals, Alajajian-Marcoosi Architects was among 64 firms responding to the request for proposal in 2014. That pool got whittled down to four, with Alajajian-Marcoosi emerging as the victor. The museum’s square footage has doubled since Alajanian-Marcoosi submitted their original proposal, because NIMBY issues moved Glendale’s then-city manager Scott Ochoa to propose a better location on Central Park Block at 151 Colorado St., a stretch of prime Glendale downtown that hosts the city’s Central Library, Neon Museum and Central Park. “While the museum’s first proposed location adjacent to Glendale Community College would have been a nice educational complement to the academics experienced on that campus, locating in the downtown offers so much more opportunity to (harness the) energy that is currently experienced in downtown Glendale,” Lanzafame said. In the expansion, the museum has gone from two to three stories. Still, the architects must utilize a space smaller than most of L.A.’s museums, including Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum. While original notions for a sculpture garden and a series of arches have been discarded, ideas for a covered terrace and a learning center have been added. The museum will include a 320-seat exhibit space for lecturers and film screenings, and a permanent display on the contributions of Armenian Americans, from President Lyndon Johnson’s Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Ignatius to playwright William Saroyan, “SCTV” star Andrea Martin, and Glendale-spawned alt-rockers System of a Down. On a roll Currently, the firm has 20 projects underway in various stages, from the four-story medical building under construction at 500 E. Colorado to a mixed-use, 80-unit apartment project on South Brand Boulevard, both in Glendale. A Hyatt Place Alajajian and Marcoosi designed on Wilson Avenue opens next month. Alajajian and Marcoosi said business has surged in the past seven years with projects outside of the constraining city of Los Angeles has allowed them more aesthetic freedom. “We like 100 percent hands-on control,” Marcoosi emphasized. Earlier in their career, they worked at large firms where individual architects didn’t have that kind of leverage. Alajajian was at Ralph M. Parsons Co. in Pasadena, Marcoosi at the since-shuttered Encino firm Garnidale Development Co., where he designed single-family homes for a 300-house tract in Camarillo. They still undertake single-family home and multifamily commissions. For English music producer A.C. Burrell, the pair is creating a blocky post-modern mansion along a Glendale hillside, cleverly hidden from street level. Past local projects include the St. Gregory Armenian Catholic Church and a Starbucks (Central Avenue Retail Plaza) in Glendale; Holiday Inn Express in North Hollywood; Hampton Inn on Sepulveda Boulevard in Sherman Oaks; Fairfield by Marriott on Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood; and Metropol, a Glendale events venue at 701 S. Central Ave. They’ve also tackled assignments in Los Angeles, Orange County, Long Beach, La Jolla, Miami Beach, and even internationally in Armenia and Egypt. Yet for the next five years, the firm will channel its energies toward realizing the Armenian-themed museum of composite metal panels, stone-cladding and glass. As Marcoosi put it, “We’ve done larger projects but this one is a special place.”

Michael Aushenker
Michael Aushenker
A graduate of Cornell University, Michael covers commercial real estate for the San Fernando Valley Business Journal. Prior to the Business Journal, Michael covered the community and entertainment beats as a staff writer for various newspapers, including the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, The Palisadian-Post, The Argonaut and Acorn Newspapers. He has also freelanced for the Santa Barbara Independent, VC Reporter, Malibu Times and Los Feliz Ledger.

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