4 posts tagged “architecture”

The San Fernando Valley

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The Department of Architecture at Woodbury University announces Valley Summit II: Design­ing the SFV, February 12 & 13.

The conference will bring together a group of scholars and community design experts who will present strategies on how we might begin to understand and, poten­tially, augment the 345 square miles that constitute the San Fernando Valley.

Click here for more information and a schedule of events.

London 2000+

London, where I spent my college years, has long been a buzzing center of art and design that has generated plenty of interesting architectural ideas (Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and many other architectural luminaries were schooled there) but little exciting new architecture – thanks to want of space, limited opportunities for young architects and tyrannical design review. Most notable new buildings in the last 30 years seemed to be high tech: exquisitely engineered but often rather soulless, transparent glass and lacey steel structures. Well, all that’s changed, according to LA’s own Sam Lubell, California editor of the Architects Newspaper and author of the new book, London 2000+. He has sought out a diverse array of new buildings, among them office towers in the high-tech tradition by the likes of Norman Foster but also art-inspired statements like the Rivington Place visual arts complex by younger talents like David Adjaye (heard on last month’s DnA on Obama’s victory and what it could mean for cities). Lubell will be talking about his findings and signing books tonight at the new LA Forum HQ at 6520 Hollywood Boulevard (just East of LACE).

DESIGN SCRIBES UNITE

Lubell is a member of the small club of Angelenos, including yours truly, who write about design and architecture in LA; and almost that entire membership gathered this past Monday at GOOD magazine’s new HQ on Melrose to read from their own works (organized by de LaB, "design east of La Brea"). If audience appreciation had been quantified by a laughometer, the stars of the evening were the Curbed LA duo of Marissa Gluck and Josh Williams on “hideous” homes for sale, which snarkily mocked other people's taste; the City of Weho’s urban designer John Chase on a very strange personal encounter, and a quite brilliant rap about LA’s recession-hit design world by the de LaB event’s organizer Alissa Walker (also DnA’s own associate producer). Some of us will be back at GOOD next Thursday, December 18, to go one better on observing LA; rather we’ll be offering up ideas for how to improve it!  

Tom and Thom

So how’s this for cross-promotion? LA architect Thom Mayne – he of Caltrans, the fab Pomona Diamond Ranch High School and many a global landmark – recently shared his musical influences with KCRW’s own Tom Schnabel.  As you can see from Thom's big beam, he clearly got a big kick out of talking music, supporting a theory I have that the so-called “rock star architects,” of which Mayne is now one, are in fact emulating, through architecture, the real rock stars of their youth. Why do I think this? Well, last time I saw Thom he raved about Shine The Light, the movie by Martin Scorcese about the Rolling Stones tour. It was evident that Mayne worshipped Mick Jagger. Soon afterwards, I ran into Wolf Prix, a fellow “rock star architect” who, like Thom, came of age in the age of rock stars, the 1960s; and he went on about his passion for Keith Richards. And what defines the architecture like that’s produced by this club of rock star architects (also including fellow boomers Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Jean Nouvel, Herzog and de Meuron and the slightly younger Zaha Hadid)? It's flamboyant, spectacular, iconoclastic. . . in sum, the architectural equivalent of a rock concert. I’m going to talk more about this, and how the "rock star" architects differ from the more serious younger generation, on an upcoming show, but in the meantime, go check out Thom and Tom.

Seen, while driving around, this snappy complex of affordable apartments, called Tahiti Housing (in honor of the "dingbat" apartments that were on the site before), located on Centinela between Pearl and Pico.

Tahiti Housing

It's designed by Daly Genik (of Art Center's South Campus and Camino Nuevo High School), for the Community Corporation of Santa Monica. Under the direction of Joan Ling, CCSM has carved out a niche for itself building low-income housing with high design values. Ling has a talent for developing projects on challenging sites, like commercial strips, and embracing unabashedly modern architecture; other CCSM projects include Colorado Place and Broadway Housing (by Pugh + Scarpa) and 26th Street (by Kanner Architects). CCSM's projects, including the soon-to-be-completed Tahiti Housing, which consists of 2 and 3-storey blocks connected by shared courtyards and flying bridges, show that it's possible to build life-enhancing housing, even on a shoe-string. 

Exterior of CCSM Housing at 26th Street