Form Follows Function

Both the cover story by Nicolai Ouroussoff (“Drafting a Career,” June 23) and subsequent letter by Jeff Softley (June 30) miss the point about Michael Maltzan’s architecture.

As an art educator, I have been a part-time user of the Inner-City Arts facility and a full-time user of the Feldman-Horn facility. I was present in both instances from the planning stages through occupation. In both cases, the promise of the young architect’s career is manifest in the internal functions of the buildings as reflected by the exterior aspect.

By this sense of architecture, as something to be experienced as well as observed, the two aforementioned art education facilities are the best I have ever worked in. In both cases, Maltzan has taken the essential elements and principles of the art education process and given them voice in physical spaces.

My favorite approach to the Feldman-Horn art complex presents the building massed to the eye like blocks of clay on the sculptor’s table, ready for a new day’s round of creation. Maltzan’s career is like these pregnant forms, full of great promise, some of it already achieved.

ARTHUR TOBIAS

Los Angeles