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LAX (pre-reconstruction), photographed by Konstantin von Wedelstaedt

Speaking of Otis, below, that school has a completely different role to play Sunday, November 8, when it and some other sexy 60s buildings will star in the LA Conservancy's one-time-only tour of gems of that decade, part of a nine-month celebration of the 60s architectural heritage of Greater LA. In keeping with the jetset era, the tour has a distinctly aviation-related flavor: it includes the fabulous LAX Theme Building (1961) (note that the observation deck will be open for the tour for the first time since 2001), the Proud Bird Restaurant (1967), an aviation-themed "destination restaurant," as well as the Imperial Terminal (1969 addition) Flight Path Learning Center & Museum. Celestiality of a spiritual kind is on show in St Jerome Catholic Church (1966), complete with intact polygonal sanctuary, original terrazzo floors, gold mosaic tiles, and a soaring folded-plate roofline. For information about time and tickets, click here.

Flight Path Museum, photo by Larry Underhill

LA's creativity not only makes this region an exciting place to live; it is also a significant driver of the economy.
Otis College of Art and Design (in tandem with The Kyser Center for Economic Research of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp (LAEDC) decided a while back to determine just how much of a driver, and next week will present its third annual report on LA's Creative Economy, offering up numbers on creative industry revenues in the region, as well as projected job gains and losses, in sectors ranging from Digital Media through Toys to Fashion. Joion Otis President Sammy Hoi next Tuesday, November 10, at a breakfast meeting about the report at the Omni Hotel in downtown; as part of the proceedings I will host a discussion with some creative industry leaders, Andy Mooney, Sir Ken Robinson and Laura Zucker, about the report and how best we can sustain Southern California's creative engine.

My friend Frank Gruber, author of The Urban Worrier: Making Politics Personal, Life and Politics in an American Town, a collection of his columns about land-use and life in Santa Monica, is sure that it's the local land-use and political issues that matter as much as, if not more, to many citizens than the more abstract national and international conflicts and debate. This has been borne out to date at two "Directions and Controversies" panels about architecture and urbanism in Pasadena, held over the past two Saturday afternoons at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, and that have attracted a large and passionate crowd. The previous panels have looked at that city's past and present; this Saturday I will moderate a discussion about its future -- with architects Michael Maltzan (designer of Kidspace Children's Museum in Pasadena, among many notable projects) and Kevin Burke of William McDonough + Partners (Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena) and artist Edgar Arceneaux (Watts House Project). 

Feathered Edge, by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues

On Sunday afternoon, I'll be at MOCA, with Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues, two highly poetic exponents of the new language of digital design. We'll be talking about their installation, Feathered Edge, on display for one more week at MOCA PDC. And we won't just talk about it; we will sit in the space itself and have them explain the high-tech-meets-handmade design and fabrication process that transformed over 21 miles of colored strings into an ethereal, almost chapel-like space of catenary curves. This installation, commissioned by former MOCA design and architecture Brooke Hodge, is a must-see before it finally close November 15.

Inner City Arts, designed by Michael Maltzan Architects

The Hollenbeck Replacement Police Station (see below) is winning prizes for greenness, and beauty. Last week it took an honor award bestowed by the Cultural Affairs Commission at the annual AIA/LA Awards gala. While this awards program is a measure of what the architectural profession views as good architecture of the moment, it is also an interesting reflection of where the money and creativity is, in terms of building types. As mentioned below, it used to be that experimental single-family homes made up the lion's share of award-winning projects but this year not just Hollenbeck but three police stations garnered awards for strong design. Also singled out were some striking condo buildings, of the type that have sprung up in West Hollywood and Hollywood in the last five years, setting a fine example for multi-family housing design. Also a gas station that seems to say, hey, the heyday of the car ain't over yet. And Inner City Arts, a school providing arts classes to impoverished downtown kids, designed and built in phases over the last ten years by architect Michael Maltzan Architect, rounded out with luscious landscaping by Nancy Goslee Power, and graphic design by Michael Hodgson. This project deservedly won another award this year, the prestigious Rudy Brunner Award, which assesses a building based on its social and economic impact on a neighborhood, and unlike most awards programs, (including the AIA's) which judge buildings based on photographs of them, involves the jurors visiting the buildings in the flesh, meeting the clients, users and designers. Inner City Arts is shown, above and below.

Inner City Arts, a beacon in downtown designed by Michael Maltzan Architects

Hollenbeck Replacement Police Station in Boyle Heights, by AC Martin Partners

This past Thursday I emceed the annual gala of the Los Angeles chapter of the US Green Building Council. This is the group responsible for introducing the LEED (Leadership and Environmental Design) certification program into the building industry and from inauspicious beginnings 11 years ago, when real men still drove the biggest gas guzzlers on the market, it has become an industry standard. While LEED has been criticized as a marketing tool by those who choose to build in an environmentally sensitive way without investing in the costly and voluntary ratings program, it has provided a framework for green design and construction after several decades in which the art of building in concert with the land and climate had been lost. 

Could these replace lawns? Image courtesy of http://www.autonomix.net/erikacolsoncom/images/succulen

From the Spoon to the City

Don't miss the chance to hear architect-designers Greg Lynn and Elena Manferdini talk about designing at multiple scales -- in the age of the computer. The talk takes it name from the show, curated by Bobbye Tigerman, of designs in LACMA's collection by architects from Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry; that show in turn takes its name from the famous Ernesto Rogers phrase, dal cucchaio alla citta, pronounced in an essay in Domus in 1952. I'll discuss the challenges and pleasures of switching scale with Elena and Greg, and hope to see you there.

The LAPD's New Headquarters in downtown LA

At the AIA/LA's annual awards gala last week, design awards went to three police stations (the new LAPD building, left, in downtown, by AECOM architects; the Hollenbeck Replacement Police Station by AC Martin and the Olympic Police Station by Gruen Associates). This was an intriguing break from the past when experimental single family houses tended to scoop up the bulk of LA architecture awards, and police stations didn't even enter the radar screen as examples of high quality design. Of course it's a challenge for a client whose primary function is to maintain safety and security to present a warm and accessible face to the world. But concommitant with the rising emphasis on community policing there is an effort on the part of the police department to create new stations that engage with the public and the neighborhood. Despite its somewhat impenetrable reflective glass edifice, the new LAPD headquarters, left, is in key ways a civic space, with public gardens on each side of the block it sits on, and a diagonal path through the site permitting pedestrian and visual connection from City Hall to Saint Vibiana's. We will talk about this building and its urban intentions on Which Way, LA? with Warren Olney and on a future DnA. 

Palomar Medical Center West

That's the topic of DnA today. In the many months of discussion about healthcare reform, one topic we don't hear about is the role the healing environment plays in healthcare. It turns out that a growing body of evidence verifies what millions of us already knew -- that time spent in a hospital is miserable, and not just because one is sick, or visiting a sick loved-one; but also because the very design of most hospitals is downright unhealthy and unsafe. On the show we'll hear from the client, Chief Nurse Executive Lorie Shoemaker, of PPH, and architect, Tom Chessum of CO Architects, of Palomar Medical Center West, a new hospital in Escondido, dubbed the "hospital of the future." We'll also hear from Ellen Taylor, with the Center for Health Design, about the new field of evidence-based design and why it's leading to hospitals that are more welcoming and less prone to medical error. And we'll hear from Todd Hutlock, a healthcare design journalist, about the connection between healthy hospitals and money.

Casey Storm, left, models a Wolf Suit

In the second half of the show we'll lighten up with a look at Halloween and creative ways of doing scary design. With the release of the movie adaptation of one of childhood's best-loved haunting stories, Where the Wild Things Are, we hear about the art of making a costume that is really specific to character, from costume designer Casey Storm, creator of Max's wolf suit for the movie. We also hear from two window-dressers, Lucy Spriggs at Lawson-Fenning in Silverlake, and Anthony Schmitt, at BNY in Santa Monica, about doing a low-cost and unconventional spin on ghoulish.

Going Batty at Lawson-Fenning, by Lucy Spriggs

Visual Acoustics

Much has been said about the late great photographer Julius Shulman, but there is more to learn, and more to delight in, in Eric Bricker's movie, Visual Acoustics, a passion project many years in the making, that screens this Friday and Saturday at the Nuart in West Los Angeles. Q and As with follow the 7:30 p.m. and 9:50 p.m. shows, as follows:

10/16:

7:30 pm   Eric Bricker and Cindy Olnick, Los Angeles Conservancy
9:50 pm   Eric Bricker and  Erla Dögg Ingjaldsdóttir, architect 

10/17          

7:30 pm   Eric Bricker and  Steven Ehrlich, architect    9:50 pm   Eric Bricker and Phil Ethington, co-writer of VISUAL ACOUSTICS