More like a rising, falling, rising star. Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works was the designer behind the complete re-do of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, (left), which opened in the Arts District almost two years ago.  I have some reservations about the less practical aspects of the building (giant concrete halls and teenagers make for a hellacious racket, plus the many slit windows on the Woodall side can suggest a prison workhouse). But still … the zigzaggy, multi-level interiors are exciting — providing ‘creative collisions,’ as it were — and the expanded facilities are undeniably impressive.

Before that, though, Cloepfil was probably best known for his flop re-design of Edward Durrell Stone’s infamous “Lollipop Building” (aka New York’s 2 Columbus Circle).

But his final design for Denver’s Clyfford Still Museum (right, the lobby) was unveiled in July, and as a result, the LATimes this weekend declared Cloepfil one of the “Faces to Watch” in the arts in 2011 — getting a jump on all the other critics who will take a gander at the completed museum when it opens later this year.