Fortress-Like or Fanciful, Fence Falls From Favor : Neighborhoods: Six designs were chosen in international contest, but homeowners prefer to keep the area open.

It all started at a homeowners meeting at the Village Green, an idyllic, 64-acre neighborhood built 50 years ago near Baldwin Hills as an experimental garden utopia.

Should the 629 homeowners put up a fence to keep out crime? Resident Wesley van Kirk Robbins, an architect, listened as his neighbors debated the question.

“A third were in favor of a fence, a third were against it and a third were on the fence,” Robbins said.

Robbins found himself waffling on the wall issue too. So he decided to do what architects do: draw from experience.

He commissioned an international design competition to determine if there is a perfect fence to encircle the place he and his neighbors contend is the perfect place to live in Los Angeles.

More than 500 architects responded with 130 of them shipping detailed entries that were judged last month by a panel of West Coast designers.

Six winners were chosen and each will receive $2,000 prizes Sunday--including an entry from Atlanta that calls for a human fence of 750 polyester-uniformed marchers “continuously moving forward, day and night.”

The contest has amused some and outraged others.

The competition has given a laugh to many Village Green homeowners. They have investigated fencing themselves and decided a sturdy one would cost more than they can afford. Better yet, there may not be a need for one: The crime rate is low and Village Green escaped last year’s riots, which caused millions of dollars damage less than a block away.

“I like it here just the way it is,” 17-year homeowner Alma Adams said with a laugh Thursday. “They’re fencing in everything else in town. But I don’t need to be fenced in.”

Robbins, 36, is displaying the winning entries and about 40 other Village Green fence proposals through Sunday at 2440 S. Sepulveda Blvd. Free viewing is available between noon and 8 p.m.

Architects from such places as Belgium, France, Spain, Japan and Singapore had a free hand at tackling Village Green.

The “human fence” entry called for an enclosure created by marchers spaced 10 feet apart. Georgia architect James Scott O’Brien specified that each be dressed in a red polyester shirt and matching bell-bottom pants and suggested that they march to 1970s disco music, where “every third person does the hustle.”

Winner Udo Greinacher of UC Berkeley proposed 8,000 underground jets that would squirt plumes of mist into the air that would be back-lit by colored lights at night.

Losing entries were just as colorful. One recommended poetry spelled out in wrought iron. Three proposed edible vegetable fences. Two included moats. One envisioned a wall made up of swimmers’ lap pools encircling the Rodeo Road property. One suggested an oversized razor-wire sculpture wrapped around the site. One called for a gas-fueled “fire” fence with blazing gates that motorists would dash through. One was designed to collapse as plants and flowers grew up around it.

Another entry proposed a $150-million fence composed of office and industrial buildings lined side by side around the neighborhood. A $35-million fence of metal posts and multiple layers of steel netting was dubbed the “Full Metal Jungle” by its designer.

Three fence entries called for no fence at all.

“I didn’t come around to that position until I visited the area,” said architect Julia Ane Donoho of Santa Monica, one of the no-fence entrants. “My ego wanted to win, but I felt I had to support people who live there. I think they feel pretty good about where they live. It’s an absolutely beautiful property. You put a gate around it and it won’t be as enjoyable.”

Architects paid a $50 entry fee that covered contest costs. In return, they received a 27-page entry book that outlined Los Angeles building codes and described the post-riot atmosphere of the community. It also included a detailed description of Village Green, built between 1941 and 1943 as an experimental urban garden residential area.

“It is a beautiful, mature example of the Radburn Idea and the 1930s version of the American Dream. It is a place with a very special way of life and is a national treasure. But can this last? Better yet, if enclosed, will the dream--or the good life--be lost? As well, what will the neighbors think?” Robbins wrote.

Assisted by architect Jane Housden, Robbins initially planned to offer a $7,500 first place prize and a series of smaller amounts to runners-up. But a judging panel of seven architects recommended six $2,000 prizes instead when they found they could not easily rank the winners.

“We were looking at conceptual options,” said Eric Owen Moss, a Culver City architect who helped judge the entries. “We wanted to know how somebody could think of the problem in various ways, including very extreme ways.”

Moss conceded that he would not want to see any fence around Village Green.

“That’s a very un-L.A.ish place,” he said. “Do you deal with problems in South Los Angeles by building walls? If you do, you turn Los Angeles into a medieval city.”

This week, Village Green residents and architect/entrants came in spurts to visit the makeshift Sepulveda Boulevard gallery space where Robbins’ fence display is set up.

There is no fence in the immediate future for Village Green, said homeowners association board member Paul Vogel, a nine-year resident. He emphasized that his organization had no involvement with the design competition.

“We have a committee that’s been working on the fence question for a year and a half or more. They had a walk-through with several contractors. The best guesstimate was it would cost $1.2 million,” Vogel said.

Although a fence might boost property values, it might have a negligible effect on crime, Vogel said. The Village Green crime rate is low--mostly occasional car break-ins.

As for Robbins, he acknowledged Thursday that he is still ambivalent about a fence. “Well . . . if there is one, I want to see it designed well,” he said.

In fence terms, that’s called hedging.