Watts Towers

Watts towers is a complex of 17 open "filigrain" towers, all made by a single guy, an italian immigrant called Simon Rodia. He built these towers with his own hands in his spare time, between 1920 and 1955. The towers are huge, made of concrete and competely covered with tiles and broken porcelain.

I had never been very much interested in Los Angeles, but after reading about this building in the early 80's, it was the first good reason for wanting to visit LA.
Unfortunately it was located in a dangerous neigbourhood: a fellow architect once told me he was robbed at gunpoint in front of this building.

Anyway, I visited the building on the last day we were in LA. And fantastic it was. But also a bit like a landed UFO in a suburban street. Weird.

I tried to draw it on location, but failed miserably. Below you see the result. So bad that I never intended to post it here.

But sometimes I use failed drawings to experiment and try out things. And sometimes it works.
Even if the new version is still not that sparkling, it's far better than the original (at least in my opinion).

Let's call it recycling.