We've just received word that we can take five friends with us to this weekend's Dwell on Design, which we went into plenty of detail about in yesterday's post.
Be our guest for three days of panels, speakers and demonstrations, including access to the exhibition, all sponsored by Dwell, starting Friday June 26, through Sunday, June 28.
Interested? Drop us an email at dna AT kcrw.org and we'll get you ticketed. If you're already planning on attending, we'll see you there!
~Alissa Walker
Friday the magazine comes to life in a full-day conference with panels curated and moderated by Frances and the other Dwell editors. Speakers include Yves Behar, William Krisel, Linda Dishman, Zoe Melo of the enlightened gallery/showroom, Touch (which tonight hosts a party to launch Indisposed, a show of American design inspired by the problem of consumer waste) and Jeremy Levine (whose beautiful Eagle Rock house you can see in Dwell; for anyone using Metropolis' helpful table of contents it's the horizontal wood slat house on the cover and starting on page 80). And after the closing keynote by Daniel Pink, the winners of the AIA Los Angeles Restaurant Design Awards will be announced on stage.
Saturday and Sunday, the exhibition, panels and speakers will continue, including the landscape and prefab exhibits of Dwell Outdoor, the Modern Family area for kids (and their parents), the sustainable showcase of Kitchen Ecology, and Reclaimed Design, where designers will stage modern rooms from furniture finds found in the LA Times classifieds.
On Saturday night, it's A Night at the Movies as Dwell screens Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman while the finest meals-on-wheels in the city will corral up for a Mobile Restaurant Row outside the Geffen Contemporary. Tickets to the film are $15 in advance, but you'll have to pay for your hot dogs, tacos, BBQ, shaved ice and more (don't worry, truck cuisine is cheap!). Architectural ice cream truck Coolhaus will also be serving the winning flavor from the Sweetest Contest Ever, co-sponsored with Dwell. Also Saturday night, starting at 8pm, Ford + Ching, formerly FordBrady, will host The Party with Vice Magazine at their space in the Kim Sing Theatre in Chinatown with bands and food until midnight. RSVP by calling 213-620-9971.
And if you're still hungry the next day, come back for Square Meal Sunday an entire day devoted to food and design co-curated by Dwell editor Sarah Rich and our Good Food KCRW compatriot, Evan Kleiman. The art and politics of meat, victory gardens, foodblogging, farmers markets, and many more topics will be covered in panels, speakers and tasty demonstrations.
Members of the design trade can actually get in to the exhibition and weekend events for free (but you must register, read carefully). Students can get in to the weekend's events for free as well. For the rest of our listeners, we have special DnA codes to register (but use these by tomorrow!): DnA listeners pay $10 for Exhibition Plus (weekend pass) with code DWELL6C and $49 for Dwell Conference Plus (three day pass, includes Friday's evening events) with code DWELL992G. Register at dwellondesign.com
Also starting Thursday is the AIA's concurrent convention which will also take place at the L.A. Convention center, Mobius LA, featuring panels and speakers specifically geared to the architects in town. And if that's not enough design for you, there's yet another show across town: CA Boom will be setting up shop this weekend in a new location, the former Robinsons department store in Beverly Hills, with a trade show, panels and home tours, including a special trip to the Pierre Koenig-designed Case Study House #22.
If you're at Dwell on Design be sure to say hi to us (Frances will be on-stage, while I'll be the one happily chained to the laptop in the live-blogging pit). If you can't make it, follow along at Dwell.com or of course on Twitter at @DwellOnDesign. Hope to see you then!
~Alissa Walker
Politics, money, ecology. . . and design -- those are just some of the complex considerations in a public park project that, says LA Times critic and DnA guest Christopher Hawthorne, make landscape design one of the most compelling design disciplines right now, and public parks among some of the most interesting new spaces the Southland. On this month's show we visit destinations that serve a specific community while also being new regional destinations worth a visit by any out-of-towner or Angeleno on a summer staycation.
1) Vista Hermosa, shown left, is a gorgeous park on restored hillside West of downtown in the Westlake neighborhood. It was created by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the LAUSD (adjacent to the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, formerly known as the beleaguered Belmont Learning Center) with landscape design by Mia Lehrer and Associates. The park offers something for everybody: walks through fragrant planted areas; a children's play area with giant sculpted tortoise and snake in place of the usual jungle jim; a soccer field; and restful terraces to simply enjoy its fantastic view of downtown.
2) Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, created by the Baldwin Hills Conservancy and State Parks on restored hillside once drilled for oil; it's dramatic and wild and has got to be one of the rare locations in LA where you can get an astonishing, near 360 degree view, enhanced by a graceful visitors center and terrace by Safdie Rabines Architects.
3) Orange County Great Park: with designer Ken Smith at the helm and a team that includes Vista Hermosa's Mia Lehrer and Associates, this is a hugely ambitious public project, transforming the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into a 1300 square feet park complete with a newly created 2.5 mile canyon and lake. The park is in process, for now you can enjoy the Great Park balloon rides, dance performances and other programmed activities in the 27 acre "preview" park.
4) Annenberg Beach House -- a destination that inspires pride in our oft-criticized public realm. The product of a private-public partnership between the Annenberg Foundation, the City of Santa Monica and State Parks, this beach club aimed at the general public offers R+R at a very affordable ticket price, in a great architectural package that mixes modern and historic. It consists of a restored guesthouse and sumptuous tiled swimming pool remaining from the neoclassical estate designed for actress Marion Davies and her lover, William Randolph Hearst by Julia Morgan, coupled with a modern clubhouse by architect Frederick Fisher, landscaping by Mia Lehrer and Associates and public art by Roy McMakin. Not to mention it's right beside the very popular Back on the Beach cafe, about to reopen back on the beach!
Part and parcel of the privilege of hosting a show on KCRW is now maintaining a blog relating to it. If you happen to read the DnA blog you may have noticed it refreshes itself rather sporadically and that is because I confess I belong to the camp that is still not fully at ease with blogging or tweeting or whatever other haiku-like forms of expression we are supposed to engage in these days to keep ourselves visible. Unlike my inimitable associate producer, Alissa Walker, for whom all things web-related come as naturally as breathing, I struggle with the instant posting of thoughts and reports, preferring to rewrite and correct things umpteen times, or post opinions only when I feel really, really strongly about something, both of which require the opposite skills from blogging.
Having got that off my chest, I am now going to refresh this blog with some recent items that matter:
1): the news that Bernard Zimmerman has passed away, at age 79. Every community has its characters and in the LA architecture world Bernard Zimmerman was one of them. Contemporary of Frank Gehry, longtime teacher at Cal Poly Pomona, Zimmerman was an ardent advocate of LA architecture, creator over the years of many exhibits of emerging LA architects, often with numbers in the titles (New Blood: 101, being one of the more recent). Mainly though, Zimmerman was the community’s conscience. He was utterly convinced of the rightness of a stringent brand of Modernism – its social as well as its formal principles – and didn’t hold back from chastising any designer he felt had fallen short of its ideals. At times he could go over the top in excoriating someone for the sin of applying too much decoration or working for a client he deemed less than ideologically pure, but he was a true believer, a dedicated teacher and unusually selfless in promoting other designers, often more than himself. He will be missed. A memorial will be held Monday.
2): the news that Sam Maloof has passed away. This revered designer and woodworker died peacefully at age 93 after a long career fashioning fine and distinctive custom furniture. Read the Times obituary here. His legacy is not only his own work, and the memory of a lovable, immensely energetic and passionate craftsman, but a current rebirth of interest in the art of craft. A memorial will be held Tuesday, at Tuesday June 9, 2009 at 3pm, at: Kresge Chapel, School of Theology, 1325 No. College Ave, Claremont, Ca 91711
3): the news that Architecture and Design curator Brooke Hodge had been dislodged from her perch at MOCA, where she has for the last eight years mounted many shows, among the most notable her "Skin and Bones" show, which explored the mutual influences in fashion and architecture. Not only is it regrettable to see Brooke have to depart (reportedly budget problems meant some curators had to be cut and those who had focused on a specialty – architecture, photography -- were chosen over the museum’s generalists) but this decision also raises the larger question of who or what institution here will henceforth champion architecture and design, particularly LA architecture and design, one of the region’s signature artistic contributions to contemporary culture. Dating back to the directorship of Richard Koshalek, MOCA has maintained a strong architecture and design department. Who will step into the breech? Read more on this in the Architect’s Newspaper. Incidentally, not only was Brooke let go but her upcoming show was also abruptly cancelled – devoted to LA architect, Thom Mayne. For his latest contribution to the art of architecture, see Nicolai Ourrousoff on Thom's new building for Cooper Union in New York.
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