Design & Architecture on KCRW.com

Last Chance to See Rock 'n' Condos

nobody@vox.com(Frances Anderton) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:04:34 -0800

Lofts@Cherokee Studios, designed by Pugh+Scarpa

Where Angeleno architects have traditionally made their mark with experimental single-family houses, in the last five or so years, we've seen an explosion of innovative multi-family residential buildings -- some high-end condos, some affordable rentals -- built by innovative developers and designed by the likes of Pugh + Scarpa, Lorcan O'Herlihy, Aleks Istanbullu and Predock_Frane. Many of them boast striking design, some add sustainability to the marketing mix; this project, Lofts@Cherokee Studios created by ReThink Development company adds rock'n'roll cred to the mix. These lofts, designed by Pugh+Scarpa , are located on the site of the legendary Cherokee recording studios. So ReThink hired designers to create these boutique interiors as homage to the ghosts of rock's heyday, shown in these pictures by Tara Wujcik. ReThink is helmed by Greg Reitz, onetime Green Building advisor at the City of Santa Monica, so the building is also selling itself on impeccable "green" credentials. You can check out the concept for yourself during free tours of the building this weekend.

David Bowie Bachelor Pad, designed by RC Design Federation with table by Rogerio Carvalheiro

Niche in master bedroom of 30STM penthouse by Jennifer Siegal and Sandra Sharma

Alice Cooper Loft by Dennis Design Group

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Architects Reaching Out

nobody@vox.com(Frances Anderton) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:33:24 -0800

Part and parcel of being a successful designer or architect is getting the news out about ones projects, and some designers just seem to have a knack for getting attention while others remain in anonymity. How much does this have to do with the intrinsic merits of the work, and how much with skilled marketing and promotional techniques? In a bid to educate architects about how to communicate effectively with potential clients, the media and the public, A + D Museum is hosting Architects Reaching Out, a two-week course taking place in the morning of this Saturday and Saturday next (November 14 and 21, 10AM - 1:00PM). The course will be moderated by architecture writer Michael Webb and will feature some guest speakers, including Yours Truly; also Sam Lubell, California Editor of Architects Newspaper; Ann Gray, publisher, Balcony Press; Lorcan O'Herlihy, LOH Architects; Christine Anderson, principal, Christine Anderson & Associates Public Relations; Benny Chan, architectural photographer; and Shannon Vincent-Brown, web-page designer. For tickets and more information, contact A+D's Tibbie Dunbar at tdunbar@aplusd.org.

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It’s a Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod City and You Can Tour It Sunday

nobody@vox.com(Frances Anderton) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:33:34 -0800

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

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Otis to Report: LA Design as Engine of the Economy

nobody@vox.com(Frances Anderton) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:08:06 -0800

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.

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Talking about Design and Cities, with Michael Maltzan, Ben Ball, Gaston Nogues, and more. . .

nobody@vox.com(Frances Anderton) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:03:09 -0800

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.

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Will LA Make its Architectural Mark with More Than Experimental Homes?

nobody@vox.com(Frances Anderton) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:13:10 -0700

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

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Real Men Love Succulents

nobody@vox.com(Frances Anderton) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:49:17 -0700

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.

The gala took place the very week President Obama announced billions of dollars in grants for "clean" energy projects around the country, reflecting the degree to which sustainability has gone mainstream. But having gone mainstream, green design has to get beyond greenwashing. Just this week an article appeared in the New York Times highlighting the theme of hidden environmental impacts of some renewable energy sources (water hogging, huge solar farms planned for the Southern California high desert; more on that on Monday's To The Point), an issue that will only become more pressing as we grapple with the disposal of batteries, the carbon footprint associated with the long distance shipping of "green" materials like bamboo, and other conundrums.

Then there is the question of green aesthetics. Also this week, critic Mike Cannell wrote in Fast Company: "the first wave of designs associated with the new efficiency is also being met with some murmurs of disappointment. In our zeal to be conscientious, are we creating designs that fit our notions of what green should be, but which don't actually look good? To put it another way: Is virtuous design always good design?" It's a valid question, to which one might answer that every wave of design produces authentic expressions of an idea as well as caricatures and duds. One of the buildings honored at the gala Thursday was the Hollenbeck Replacement Police Station, by venerable LA firm, AC Martin Partners. One could use many adjectives to describe this building but "virtuous" probably wouldn't be one of them. Judging by this and other "green" buildings appearing on the landscape, this is an exciting time, in which an age of sculpture in architecture meets new materials and technology meets a renewed, and long overdue, reconnection with the land and climate.

The topic of reconnecting with nature, specifically water, was addressed at the gala with great authority by keynote speaker Tim Brick, head of the Metropolitan Water District. As part of his call to arms for saving water, he spoke about lawns and how essential it was to stop growing them in the parched South-West. It so happens that I was recently part of a brainstorming session, organized by Huffpost's Paige Donner and water watcher Conner Everts, to find ways to "message" the idea of water conservation. We pondered how could one convince men that vivid green lawns were not an essential expression of contemporary suburban manhood, and after much playing with verbal ideas, came up with the slogan: "Real Men Love Succulents."

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

After Tim Brick concluded his rousing speech, I told this story to the audience and, to my surprise (because one never knows how these remarks will go down; it could have been a frightful clunker), it got a big laugh. Now this may be because succulents happened to be the table decorations, but it may also be because the time is right. Real men (and women of course) no longer need gas-guzzling cars and lawnmowers, they need solar-powered gadgets, LEED certifications, and, may be, front yards blooming with succulents.

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From The Spoon to the City

nobody@vox.com(Frances Anderton) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:10:55 -0700

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.

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Are Police Stations new Civic Landmarks?

nobody@vox.com(Frances Anderton) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:50:17 -0700

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.

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Do Hospitals Make You Sick; Can Good Design Help you Heal?

nobody@vox.com(Frances Anderton) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:06:12 -0700

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

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