“. . .  the library is one of the seven or eight most impressive pieces of public architecture to open in Southern California in a decade,” writes Christopher Hawthorne about the new West Hollywood library (designed by architects Johnson Favaro), and among the many elements that make it eye candy for visitors is the public art — a white coral tree wending out of the wall and over the stairway by David Wiseman, and bold murals by street artists Shepard Fairey, RETNA and Kenny Scharf.
Three of those artists – Shepard Fairey, …

Today’s show is about preserving the past while building our future. The impetus for the show was the recent news that Richard Neutra’s 1955 Kronish House in Beverly Hills might be demolished. The house was photographed last April by photographer Marc Angeles who kindly let us use this marvelous image, left, and told us about this experience photographing a Neutra house that has remained closed from the public for many years: “The Neutra-designed house is set back off of busy Sunset Blvd and lies deep in the property, and is approached only …

A few months ago it was the Friars Club that fell victim to the wrecking ball. Now another Beverly Hills landmark, Richard Neutra’s Kronish House (left, in photo by Marc-Angeles-of-Unlimited-Style-Photograph​y), is under threat of being torn down, due, says Christopher Hawthorne in this Los Angeles Times story, to that city’s lack of “even the most basic historic-preservation ordinance.”
Hawthorne mentions that this threat to one of the Neutra’s more opulent designs (that neither he — nor I — has actually seen) takes place in a moment when the role of …

On DnA this week, we talked about L.A. Noire and the extraordinary lengths the game designers went to in creating a virtual, and past, Los Angeles. Even though 1947 LA was notoriously crime-ridden and had many social problems, the production designer, Simon Wood, spoke wistfully of a time when, in his view, effort and passion went into the design of everything, from clothing to cars to buildings, while today he said, with few exceptions (like the iPhone), cars and products look like “clones” of each other. Such a …

There was consternation recently in the LA planning and architecture community, at the sudden departure of  Planning Director Gail Goldberg. Goldberg was welcomed four years ago to the City from San Diego by  Mayor Villaraigosa who touted her vision of concentrating development on public transit nodes (AKA Smart Growth).
Barely had Goldberg vacated her office than the Mayor replaced her with Michael Logrande, a cheerful, 39-year old  zoning administrator lauded by his boss for his can-do spirit. But while Goldberg had some critics who had charged her with allowing “developers to run the show at City Hall,” that charge has been …

I recently saw the movie, Inception, which came highly recommended as the architecture-porn film of the summer. And stunning looking and conceptually inventive it surely is. But still, I left the theater thinking if that the movie-makers had spent millions LESS on car chases and explosions — ie. if they had exercised some restraint – the story would have been a whole lot more compelling.
Since Inception is a box office smash, I realize I hold a minority view. But I thought again about this notion of restraint when I …

How do we really experience the city, especially one as mediated, dramatized and analyzed as Los Angeles? In its tangible, built form? Or through verbal and visual interpretations by artists and writers? Recognizing the power of description, de LaB (Design East of La Brea, a group founded by Alissa Walker and Haily Zaki, now joined by Marissa Gluck, formerly editor at Curbed LA) has assembled City Listening II, an evening of stories about Los Angeles written and read by some of LA’s most interesting writers on design and the urban experience …

Is THIS architecture? It’s like asking if the iPad is a book? Digital technology is changing our perception of substance and form and possibility so fast that all we can do is enjoy the ride and hope the construction industry keeps pace.
Tonight at SCI-Arc Tom Wiscombe of Emergent, designer of this competition entry for a Taipei Performing Arts Center, will join Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of the Oyler Wu Collaborative to receive Arch Is__ Young Architectural Talent Awards, conferred on them by the AIA/LA. The high-powered jury that singled out …

I love architecture.  Some buildings, by no means all, spark in me a visceral thrill comparable to a deeply powerful piece of music. They can be thrilling for their sensory qualities: light, space, materials and relationship to nature; or they can be thrilling for their bravado and sensation and sheer chutzpah. But sometimes those very same buildings, especially the ones bursting with chutzpah, can be troubling on another level. They can be a huge waste of money and resources; they can undergird a failed and unjust economic system; they can have been exploitative …