The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

This guide to the Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo starts at a 1983 party inside a former police-car garage, where fifteen hundred architects and designers came to see what a young Frank Gehry had done with a leased-for-a-dollar warehouse while MOCA's permanent home was still a hole in the ground. You'll hear how the building began life as a 1940s hardware warehouse, and how Gehry left the chain-link and steel trusses exposed while keeping a rusted crane rail bolted to the ceiling. Listen for the old loading docks he turned into the lobby you walk through now.