We've always been curious about the swanky Encounter Restaurant at LAX, but if you're like us we only remember it's there as we are running for a terminal at full speed to make our plane.
The iconic Googie architecture was built in 1960/61 and in 1996 "The Mouse" stepped in and gave the place a little Los Angeles-style face lift.
Because Disney is so good at what they do they thought about the whole experience starting with the light show outside and the elevator or 'space ship" ride up with moody music. As the head of the Disney Team responsible for the remodel Eddie Sotto said: " We wanted the inside to feel like an "intergalactic in flight" lounge. The kinda place George Jetson, James Bond and Barbarella could drink together."
If you would like to see more photographs of the lounge please visit our source The Lope: The Future was so Cool in 1961 for a more detailed account [source corrected; the original photographer and writer notified us].
Readers...possibly our next AT:LA get together? Now that would be a party to blog about!
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
Im curious... who owns the Encounter... the city of LA? Was Disney hired by the city, or do they own the restaurant? I didn't know Disney offered any kind of design services... do they?
The decor in the Encounter is very cool, but the logo and website they have now is really tacky and silly. What happened to the cool modernist logo designed by Adams Morioka?
As for the food, uh...nothing to write home about.
view JyoJyo's profile
I believe that the restaurant is currently closed while the actual structure of the Theme Building is being repaired, but maybe I'm wrong... I actually went to a party there several (9? 10?) years ago shortly after Encounter first opened. Though the vibe of the party was cool (Senor Amor was spinning lounge tunes), the place definitely felt Disney-fied, in a bad way.
The overall design felt like a parody of the '50s googie aesthetic and had a tacky late '90s Space Mountain feel: gelled lights, lots of swirled stainless steel surfaces, cartoon-y colors and graphic elements. Basically, it lacked any kind of Mid-C sophistication I'd like to see in an iconic building like this... James Bond meets Barbarella this ain't.
A nice touch that I remembered: Danny Elfman-esque theme music for the elevator ride. The food was just okay: think sub-par CPK with lots of fried appetizers.
view Enrique's profile
Bummer! Well we know that if Enrique gives it a thumbs down you know-it-be-tru' !!
view richie rich's profile
...but imagine if Philippe Starck got his hands on it and gave it a Katsuya-styled makeover--or even something like his desgin for the Taschen Store in Beverly Hills. Then, you'd have a place worth visiting!
http://www.sbeent.com/katsuya/
http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/company/stores/content/520.htm
view Enrique's profile
It has been closed since March because a big chunk of the exterior fell to the structure below.
http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-lax9mar9
The food is (was) blah, but if you're going to go, go at night - so you don't notice the stained carpets/seats and the semi-beat upholsetry. I hope they do some work to the interior as well.
view JasonD's profile
OK, Paul Williams is one of my favorite 2Oth century architects--I was lucky enough to duck into an estate sale in Peoria one rainy day & stumble across a set of original 193Os photos of the Hollywood Regency mansion Williams designed for Charles Correll--and I've always loved undulating, amoeboid Jetsonian interiors, but the cloying pinks & purples & turquoises in the photo remind me less of the Jetsons than they do My Little Pony. Dorothy Parker's dismissal of a Winne the Pooh book come to mind. Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
Keep the curves, but ditch the icky colors.
Magnaverde.
view magnaverde's profile
I went up there once a couple of years ago while waiting to pick someone up at the airport, and it was very plastic, and had loud annoying music blasting throughout. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. It was a real shame. It would have been an ideal place to hide-out for awhile and relax, but instead it left me tense and anxious.
view eddieb's profile
Actually, I am the original source of the photos and the text; it was photographed, researched and written for my blog at
thelope.com, over a year ago. Please change your attribution accordingly.
The whole post has been lifted, minus the correct title, without my permission and posted on the livejournal account you reference. Most of the photos are even hyperlinked to my storage space, so I'm even paying for the copied post.
The owner of the livejournal account did attribute his source as "thelope" but does not include a URL. I am trying to figure out how to deal with this.
I obtained permission from The Laughing Place to reprint the interview with Eddie Sotto, from which the original title, "The Future was so Cool in 1961", is taken, so the copied post is inaccurate in that it attributes it's changed title to Sotto. I endeaver to be accurate - to respect my sources and their intellectual property - so this distresses me.
view thelope's profile
Sorry... last paragraph shoud read "it attributes it's changed title to Borelli".
view thelope's profile
Oh my god this interior is awful! Whoever did this should be utterly embarrassed, I mean was this style ever even in? And its really a shame because the building is absolutely gorgeous! They really need to get rid of that cheesy earlies nineties trying to be 60's look at decorate it with some real mid century modern appeal!
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