Amazing Life

From New York Times (full article)

Gin Wong, a Chinese-born architect whose modernist designs helped define the postwar landscape of Los Angeles in structures as diverse as a gas station, CBS Television City and Los Angeles International Airport, died on Sept. 1 in Beverly Hills. He was 94.

Architects traditionally achieve renown with corporate headquarters, private residences, museums, concert halls and stadiums. And while Mr. Wong worked on many such projects, it was an unconventional one — his 1960 design of a Union 76 gas station in Beverly Hills — that remains one of his most beloved and enduring.

Among his many other works were commercial buildings in Singapore and Honolulu; a savings and loan branch in Rancho Mirage, Calif., with curved walls made of Mexican black lava rock; hotels, restaurants and houses; a library in South Korea; and, in downtown Los Angeles, the Midnight Mission, a facility for the homeless featuring landscaping with golden-leaved honey locust trees that shimmer in the breeze.