Archinect - Features

Los Angeles Reckons with a Dark History by Asking the Public How to Memorialize the 1871 Chinese Massacre

2022-09-30T18:40:00-04:00

Architects and artists are frequently asked to contribute their ideas for proposed memorials and other works of public art. The City of Los Angeles recently issued a Request for Ideas (RFI) that many designers may find compelling at a time when America's history of race relations and violence are top of mind for many Americans.

Michael Pinto, Principal at NAC Architecture in Los Angeles, discussed the new L.A. RFI with two figures deeply involved in laying the groundwork for a new memorial to the 1871 Massacre of 18 Chinese in Los Angeles that was the largest mass killing in the city's history. Pinto, an advisor to the memorial process, spoke with Christopher Hawthorne, Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles (and former L.A. Times architecture critic), and Michael Woo, an urban planner who is a former city council member and dean emeritus of Cal Poly Pomona's College of Environmental Design.

What's Next?: A Panel Discussion for A+D Museum's "Never Built: Los Angeles"

2013-08-12T20:19:00-04:00

Does L.A. even want to be defined by a provincial architecture? Is it necessarily a disadvantage that the city serves as an incubator, rather than a fairground, for architectural innovation -- or as Thom Mayne put it, as a world-class global exporter of urban and architectural ideas? It may be that the very landscape of inspiration is an obstruction to execution.

A Conversation with Michael Woo

2011-04-07T20:02:59-04:00

By Orhan Ayyüce

Michael Woo is the dean of California Polytechnic University, Pomona the College of Environmental Design which contains departments of Architecture, Art, Landscape Architecture, Urban and Regional Planning, and the John T. Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies. He is a familiar name in Southern California. Mr. Woo has served in Los Angeles City Council and ran for the mayor's office in 1993 as the Democratic candidate, losing by a small margin to Republican candidate and businessman Richard Riordan. A planner by education, Mr. Woo is a unique dean for a design school with the background of an established politician and, to a degree, an environmental activist. I sat down with him last December in his office and had this conversation.