Architecture: A dramatic makeover in Lafayette Park

The new Lafayette Park Recreation Center, as I write in this Sunday's Arts & Books section, was the last major project designed by the prolific architect Stephen Kanner, who died last year at 54.

It is also a dramatic example of how old and new architecture can fit agreeably together. The design by Kanner and his colleagues at Kanner Architects helped revive a 1963 barrel-vaulted building -- originally a senior center -- by the Glendale architect Graham Latta.

The new complex, which attaches a gymnasium to the older building, is shown above. A photograph of the Latta senior center before the new construction is after the jump.

-- Christopher Hawthorne

Photos, from top: The new Lafayette Park Recreation Center by Kanner Architects; The pre-renovation version of Graham Latta's senior center. Credit: Nicolas O.S. Marques