Public Places : Beaming Up the Wrong Image : L.A.’s Civic Center is the setting for the Simpson trial. A historian comments on the impression it is sending.

The scenes are televised everywhere: the news crews crowding a narrow concrete strip in front of Los Angeles’ Criminal Courts building, awaiting the entrances and exits of lawyers; a parking lot next door is crammed with the satellite trucks and interview platforms of the media’s “Camp O.J.” Behind the court building, across from the front of City Hall, is another parking lot.

Why is there a block-square parking lot here, where a civic plaza ought to be?

That question will soon be addressed, because the city and county Civic Center Joint Planning Authority, which hasn’t met in 13 years, has been revived. The neglected public environment of the government center is about to receive some attention.

The city, county, state and federal governments need more than 6 million new and rehabilitated square feet of office space. Agencies have been abandoning the Civic Center for suburbs. But by planning together, consolidating space and sharing facilities, the agencies will save money and can take advantage of the Red Line, freeways and other infrastructure already in place.

VINCENT SCULLY, architectural historian, author and professor at Yale University, is a visiting professor at Cal Tech this term. He shared his impressions of the Civic Center and “Camp O.J.” with Public Places columnist JANE SPILLER.

*

Question: Does the public environment surrounding the O.J. Simpson trial tell us something about ourselves as a society?

Answer: The fact that this tragic trial is going on in the shoddy Criminal Courts building is emblematic. The entrance where everybody stands around is not a community space, it’s a basement space. It faces away from City Hall and could be any office building. It gives us the message that there’s no dignity in our public life. It’s all on the backside. It’s tragic that we ever built buildings like that. And, of course, we all did, everywhere.

Q : Is that building characteristic of a certain era?

A: I think it’s what happened after World War II. All of us really forgot what buildings are all about and what cities are all about, what communities are all about. We’re suffering from that now.

It’s so tragic too because the City Hall is so great, the way it climbs up with a powerful tower rising above it. And the wonderful space, the mall, between the City Hall and the top of the hill by the Music Center has such a quality of being a city. It’s wonderful to see the glassy towers of Downtown from the government center but not have them impinge. It’s a mountain capital. You’re on a hill with mountains all around. I had no idea you could get that in the middle of Los Angeles.

Q : What kind of building would you like to see here?

A: I’d like to see a building like the one across the street, the condemned 1925 Hall of Justice. It has a noble facade with a noble doorway, a wonderful rusticated wall and columns up above. It looks as if it was built with love by somebody who cared about justice and cared about the way it was going to be in 100 years. The other one has no character at all.

Q: If you look back to antiquity to the places where law and justice evolved, what comes to mind?

A: For the Greek, a lot took place in the major civic space, the Agora, a space defined by noble public buildings, colonnades and so on. It was a place shaped for civic events. There, they would vote to banish people by scratching on an ostrakon, a bit of pottery. That’s why it’s called ostracism.

When we think of law, we think of the Romans. Law is the great achievement of Rome. In the Forum, the great public space, stood the Basilica, the law court. You go up a few steps and walk into this echoing hall with a central aisle. It’s a splendid volume of space, a long arcade. We are all in debt to this image of civic order and decency.

Think of the difference if the activities surrounding the trial were all happening on the steps of City Hall, going up rather than down, the sense of the dignity and the sorrow of the proceedings. Its civic implications would be so much stronger and you’d understand it more.

Q: What do you think of Camp O.J.?

A: That’s wonderful architecture. It’s so light and it’s lifted up in the air on those very thin pipes--it’s terrific. That’s a temporary architecture that really is pavilion architecture, market-day architecture. In a kind of terrible way, this is a festival going on here.

Q: What would you like to see in front of City Hall?

A: I think the parking lot should be a great square or a garden. It would be a place where all kinds of things would happen--maybe speeches, maybe plays, demonstrations, whatever. It would have a setting like the old New England green, where the people are. The potential of making this a beautiful space is really very high.