Design & Architecture

Are you interested in joining an online club of architects? If so, check out Architizer.com, a four-month old web site is that serves as a free virtual nexus for architects, clients, critics and fans of contemporary architecture. Better yet, get offline and meet the web creators and LA architects participating in Architizer at a launch party for the site, taking place  tonight at 6:30PM at the new home of A+D Museum at 6032 Wilshire Boulevard.

Examples of West Coast projects on Architizer will be displayed and computer terminals will be on hand to provide guests with a first-hand experience. Ice cream sandwiches by Coolhaus, the architect-owned and operated ice cream truck, will be available outside the party on Wilshire Boulevard. Los Angeles firms already online include Escher GuneWardena Architiecture, Greg Lynn FORM, Michael Maltzan Architecture, NMDA – Neil Denari Architects, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S and Richard Meier & Partners LLP among others.

Frank Gehry may be a global architect but he is also a resident of Santa Monica and will show his support Thursday evening for one of the community’s most treasured assets: the public school music program. He will be interviewed at Barnum Hall, on the campus of Santa Monica High School, by Barbara Isenberg, author of “Conversations with Frank Gehry. They will talk about his work and his inspiration– especially from the arts and music. This will be accompanied by performances cellists Lynn Harrell and Antonio Lysy. The event takes place at 7 p.m., March 18.  Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com/events/98713. More information: call 310-395-3204 x 407 or visit our website www.samohiorchestras.org. All proceeds go to supporting the Santa Monica High School Orchestra.

On today’s DnA, the design of spectacle. With two new high-profile clubs opening in LA — Drai’s Hollywood, atop the new W Hollywood, and Trousdale in Weho –DnA takes a look at the art of nightclub design. It’s one thing to get the lighting, the furnishings, the colors right, but how do you create that ineffable quality essential to any good club: the vibe? Victor Drai, owner of some very successful late night hangouts in Vegas, and SCI-Arc grad and co-principal of young hospitality design firm Christian Schulz offer up some perspectives. In the spirit of club life, I met Christian last week at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, before he took a late night design meeting met with clients and partners Adam Goldstein and Leslie Kale  about some new haunts they are creating for the hotel. Images immediately below, top: Drai’s interior; middle: Hyde Lounge at Staples by Studio Collective; bottom: Adam Goldstein, Leslie Kale and Christian Schulz of Studio Collective.

Also on the show, big box retail has been a cornerstone of urban development over the last couple decades (due to being a source of sales tax, post Prop 13) but now many companies that filled the big boxes are going under. What does a city do with the empty space? One answer is, fill it with art. The City of Glendale is hiring an art consultant to “curate” its big boxes. We’ll hear all about it from the City of Glendale’s Alan Loomis and Emil Tatevosian, as well as Downtown Art Walk’s Bert Green. Could the former Circuit City in down Glendale be turned into a buzzing temporary art space, like the Manifest Equality pop-up show, see below, earlier this month in an old Big Lots story in Hollywood?

And last on the show, but absolutely not least, it’s the LA reality we like to forget — that we too could be smacked by a massive earthquake like those that suffered by Chile andHaiti (note, we had a baby one just today). Are we ready? One prominent LA structural engineer, Nabih Youssef, talks about our strengths — and weaknesses — in an age when earth sciences, structural engineering and computer modelling have advanced to the point that new buildings can, hopefully,  ”ride the wave.” But what about the older ones?

Last week thousands of people stopped by a former Big Lots store on Vine to sample artworks donated by Robbie Conal, Shepard Fairey, Harvey Pekar and many others. They were on show for a brief but buzzing five days, under the bright fluorescent lights of a onetime supermarket, to raise awareness, and funds, for the Courage Campaign, a progressive organization whose causes include overturning Prop 8 and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (shown, piece by Mike Murphy, left, and, below, volunteer sisters, Suzy, left, and Gabriella Greene). The show, called Manifest Equality, was organized by Jennifer Gross and Yosi Sergant – the force behind the Manifest Hope poster campaign for presidential candidate Barack Obama (Sergant is back in LA after serving briefly as head of PR at the NEA until being forced out last year over an apparent conflict-of-interest.)

But this event was also a use of derelict space that we might start to see a lot more of. There have been a number of these kind of artist-lead pop-up shows in empty storefronts (listen to DnA on “guerrilla” stores). But now the City of Glendale is making it official; they are looking for an art curator to “coordinate and manage installation of art displays in vacant storefronts” in its downtown. Applications are due March 8. One wonders how many other cities might take the lead in turning recession-hit retail spaces into pop-up art spaces in what could be a creative way for art and city to forestall blight.

LA’s proliferating and often illegal billboards are a source of great frustration to many –  now prompting a crack down by City prosecutors. Kimberli Meyer, director of the MAK Center at the Schindler House, chose the strategy of, “if you can’t beat ‘em, replace ‘em,” with non-commercial messages by conceptual artists. The result is Art In Stead, 21 images spread thoughout West Hollywood and Hollywood (works by Yvonne Rainer, top, and Kenneth Anger). On last month’s DnA, Kimberli and I had a lively discussion about this project, and the nature of art in a time when advertizing appropriates many of the strategies of conceptual art (which in turn has often subverted commercial messaging). And DnA associate producer/Fast Company Design editor Alissa Walker took a tour of all the billboards. Here’s her take.

This just in from SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture)

ARCHITECT RAIMUND ABRAHAM (1933-2010)

Dies in Car Accident in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES –(March 4, 2010)–Architect Raimund Abraham, a visiting faculty member at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, died early Thursday in a car accident in downtown Los Angeles, the school announced. 

Abraham, an accomplished architect and educator in Europe and the United States, was born in 1933 in Lienz, Tyrol.   Abraham emigrated from Austria to the United States in 1964, and has taught at the Cooper Union and Pratt Institute since 1971.  He gave a lecture at SCI-Arc on Wednesday evening, hours before his death.

SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss describes Abraham as an irreplaceable force in architecture.

“Earlier in the evening Raimund delivered a powerful lecture at SCI-Arc, re-stating his enduring love for architecture and his willingness to fight for the design discourse as he defined it.  That unique and powerful Abraham advocacy for architecture is irreplaceable. Raimund, We miss you.”

A gathering in honor of Abraham will be held Friday at 1 pm at SCI-Arc in the W.M. Keck Lecture Hall.

Abraham’s work has been shown widely throughout Europe, Mexico, and the US, with exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museo Correr, Venice, Italy; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Pinakothek, Athens; National Gallery, Berlin; Leo Castelli Gallery, New York; Architektur Museum, Frankfurt; the Venice Biennale; Krinzinger Gallery, Innsbruck; Architectural League, New York; and the Graham Foundation, Chicago.

His awards include 2nd prize for a Cultural Center in Leopoldville, Congo (with F.Gartler-St.Florian, 1959); 2nd prize, Centre Pompidou, Paris; 1st prize, Rainbow Plaza, Niagara Falls; 2nd prize, Shinkenshiko Residential Design Competition, Tokyo; 1st prize, IBA-Berlin; 2nd prize, Paris Opera; 1st prize, Times Square Tower, New York; Stone Lion Award at the Architecture Biennale in Venice; 3rd prize,The New Acropolis Museum, Athens; 1st prize, Austrian Cultural Institute, New York, and 1st prize, Lungo Lago, Ascona, Switzerland.

As someone who tries to bring architecture alive in print and on radio, I constantly come up against the challenge of representation: just how do you tell the story of a building when you are not in it? Can 2-D representations — be they photographs, drawings, movies or computer-generated models — ever really capture volume and space of a building, or the intangible qualities, like memory or smell and the human imprint? How do photographers, illustrators, illuminators, and other artists imagine and represent architecture within the confines of their flat media? Who do these representations serve? These are some of the questions I’ll be discussing this coming Thursday evening with a fascinating panel of experts:  architect/landscape architect and watercolorist Mario Violich of the Santa Monica firm Moore Ruble Yudell.; Stephen Murray, professor of art history at Columbia University, who is creating a web site devoted to capturing and creating context for Gothic architecture; and Peter Hales, photographer, and professor of art history at the University of Illinois in Chicago. The event, starting 7:00PM at the Harold M. Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center, and produced by the Getty’s Peter Tokofsky, plays off three new exhibitions that in different ways explore architecture in 2-D: Building the Medieval World: Architecture in Illuminated Manuscripts; A Record of Emotion: The Photographs of Frederick H. Evans; and Urban Panoramas: Opie, Liao, Kim.

When it comes to fashion, LA is associated as much with a “look” as with brand labels, and that look is in part created by stylists, who assemble a client’s jewelry, hair, shoes, bag, clothes, make-up into a total look. Even though many stylists project a great sense of personal style they generally work behind the scenes but painter Kimberly Brooks decided to put the spotlight, or rather the paintbrush, on them. The result is an exhibit of paintings of notable LA stylists, perfectly timed to open just before the stylists’ high point of the year, Oscar night. Including in “Kimberly Brooks: “The Stylist Project” are images of celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe; costume designer and Madonna’s personal stylist Arianne Phillips; New York Times Magazine stylist Elizabeth Stewart; Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant, and, shown here, style writer and entrepreneur Rose Apodaca, heard just recently on DnA, talking about Alexander Mc Queen. The show is at Taylor De Cordoba, at 2660 South La Cienega Blvd in Los Angeles, CA. The gallery is open from Tuesday – Saturday, 11AM – 6PM.

Today is an emotional day for many of us at KCRW; Ruth Seymour, the station’s indomitable general manager, makes her farewell.

I am one of many of whose lives have been profoundly affected by Ruth. I moved to LA 19 years ago because I had fallen in love with the region and its experimental architecture, and started my life here editing an architecture newspaper. But then came the Rodney King riots in 1992 and a program called Which Way, LA?, created by Ruth, hosted by Warren Olney, a show that I found so meaningful and relevant I resolved to work on it. I volunteered for WWLA and eventually became a producer.

I did not know Ruth at first – initially she seemed rather unapproachable and scary—but along the way we got to talking and up came the topic of architecture and design. This was the time that blue chip public buildings in LA were under construction—the new Getty Center by Richard Meier, the Walt Disney Concert Hall by Frank Gehry. I found that as with every topic that Ruth embraced, she was passionate and fascinated by it. But she was not yet ready for a radio show on the subject.

Then came a controversy – the choice of the provocative Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to redesign LACMA, and his idea of renovation was to tear down the entire museum. Well, Ruth loves a good conflict and decided we needed to debate it on Politics of Culture. To my astonishment, she asked me to be the host. I was utterly terrified – to this day all I can remember is being a kind of verbal goalie, trying to catch and make sense of comments as they flew past me by from the likes of Andrea Rich and Edward Goldman.

But somehow, after this, Ruth decided that I should host a regular show about design and architecture, which she, with her knack for witty titles, named DnA. I was not really ready, in fact it took many months to get comfortable in the hosting seat. But that was just one of the many remarkable gifts that Ruth gave to so many of us. She took risks on us; she let us learn by doing, she let us experiment on the airwaves, she overestimated our capabilities, and in doing so, forced us to rise to that level.

As time went on, Jennifer Ferro took the helm of executive producer of DnA, and has been deeply involved in making the show what it is today. So it is with great appreciation for her talents and optimism about the future that I and my colleagues welcome her into Ruth’s seat on Monday. It is wonderful that Ruth’s legacy should be passed on to a gifted protégée.

But today is Ruth’s day and a sense of melancholy at her leaving. My experience of Ruth, who in time became a dear friend, as well as a sometimes ferocious critic, brings to mind David Hockney, the British painter who was so transformed by Los Angeles when he first moved here that his paintings changed, from monochrome to vividly colored acrylics. That is how I see Ruth. She is so electrifying a person that to be in her orbit is to have ones life transformed from black and white to Technicolor. The word “retirement” does not seem to apply to Ruth; I am sure that in her next stage she will continue to galvanize the world around her.

For more perspectives on Ruth from people who knew and worked with her, listen to KCRW’s  The Truth About Ruth, airing today.

There has been much amusement in the design and architecture world recently over the satire of Modernist living in Dwell magazine on Unhappy Hipsters (where its anonymous authors rewrite photo captions to infer the soul-destroying emptiness of the Spartan Modern home). Not since Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle has Modern Living been so devastatingly mocked (Disclaimer: I love Modernism and I write for Dwell).

Such a desolate view of such architecture was nowhere to be found however this weekend in Palm Springs, which has spent the last week enjoying its bigger than ever Palm Springs Modernism Week, the annual festival hosted by the Palm Springs Museum of Art, under the energetic leadership of Sidney Williams, daughter-in-law of the late Palm Springs architect, Stewart Williams. The crowds included Angeleno enthusiasts, like John English, Ginny Glass and Chris Carr, local businesses trading in Mod Com (as in Modern commodities), and a string of high-profile academics – among them David De Long, Nicholas Olsberg, Jean-Louis Cohen, who each delivered erudite interpretations of the work and influence of Frank Lloyd Wright and John Lautner. I was there yesterday, moderating a panel with architects Wendell Burnette and Frank Escher about Lautner and Wright’s legacy among architects now.  Treats included movie screenings and a tour of Lautner classics, taking in the Elrod House and the Pearlman Mountain cabin. (I had to return to LA but took a detour to check out Michael Lehrer’s Water and Life Museums in Hemet, a beacon of sustainable architecture within the Modern aesthetic).

Everyone stayed at the ACE Hotel, the newish hotel, shown in photo above left (from gaytravel.about.com), that is very much designed with the Dwell sensibility in mind. As I lay in the all-white bedroom with concrete floor and prison cell lighting, only barely relieved by smatterings of 60s photos and 70s LPs, I must say I did feel a little like an Unhappy Hipster, yearning for the warmth and color and sensuality that the best Modernists, like John Lautner, never lost sight of.