Welton Becket's Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stars in Kenzo perfume advert
American director Spike Jonze has used an iconic Los Angeles music hall by Modernist architect Welton Becket as the venue for a four-minute perfume advert for French fashion house Kenzo (+ movie).
The film for Kenzo's Le Nouveau Parfum sees actress Margaret Qualley dance expressively in a green dress around the landmark Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, designed by Becket and completed in 1964.
After leaving a dull gala dinner, the actress begins to move wildly around the building's soft-lit empty corridors and public spaces – interacting with its mirrored walls and artworks – to a track called Mutant Brain by Sam Spiegel and Ape Drums (featuring Assassin).
She reaches the empty 3,156-seat auditorium, which normally hosts opera performances, before exiting the building so its facades of glass and stone-clad columns can be seen. It ends after Qualley jumps through a giant eye made from flowers.
Other architectural features shown in the clip include the staircases, curved mezzanine levels and golden internal columns.
The pavilion is one of the four halls that make up the Los Angeles Music Center, with others including the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theatre, and the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall.
The venue hosted the Academy Awards ceremony between 1969 and 1987, then in various years including 1999, when Jonze lost out in the Best Director category for his critically acclaimed film Being John Malkovich.
American architect Becket was known for his use of unusual facade treatments, like repetitive elements created in stainless steel grillwork, ceramic tiles and stone cladding.
His other iconic buildings in Los Angeles include the cylindrical Capitol Records tower, completed in 1956.
Becket also worked on the futuristic 1961 Theme Building at LAX, designed with a team of architects that included William Pereira, Charles Luckman and Paul Williams.
After his death in 1969, his firm Welton Becket & Associates merged with Ellerbe Associates in 1987 and became Ellerbe Becket until the end of 2009, when it was acquired by AECOM.