Archinect - News

LA's A+D Museum to close physical location and go virtual

2020-06-18T14:12:00-04:00

The Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles (A+D) has announced an institutional restructuring initiative as well as a transformation focus on digital and traveling exhibitions and programming in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a statement published by the museum, Executive Director Anthony Morey and Deputy Director Leila Wahba write, “A+D Museum’s mission to be a platform and space of engagement for our architects, designers, creatives, and audience must shift with the needs of our community. As a team we have heard the response to societal shifts and as a family we recognize the opportunity to transform ourselves in response to this place in time."

The museum leaders add, "We are thrilled to evolve, to become a more dynamic expression of our mission and our supporter’s needs. By transitioning to a hybridized platform structure, we release ourselves from a solitary physical presence and embrace a more expansive presence, a long discussed goal of our Beyond Walls Strate...

Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation and A+D Museum unveil "Built by Women" exhibit in Los Angeles

2020-02-25T14:02:00-05:00

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) and the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles (A+D) have announced the latest iteration of the Built by Women exhibition, a program designed to celebrate "the breadth of achievement by women at the building industry’s highest levels in cities across the nation."

The exhibition, which features the work of 56 women-led architecture, landscape, engineering, and construction projects from the L.A. area, goes on view on May 15th at the A+D Museum and is timed to coincide with this summer's American Institute of Architects (AIA) Conference on Architecture, which is slated to take place in Los Angeles May 14-16th.

The Santa Monica Public Library by Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners. Photo by John Linden

The exhibition is curated BWAF's all-female jury, a group made up of: Carrie Byles, FAIA, LEED AP, a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Andrea Cochran, FASLA, president of Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture; ErLeen Hatfi...

L.A.'s Architecture and Design Museum will debut new slate of exhibitions this weekend

2020-01-23T17:00:00-05:00

This weekend, the Architecture and Design Museum (A+D) in Los Angeles will debut a new collection of exhibitions via its seasonal The Assembly opening event. The opening will highlight four new exhibitions set to occupy the museum's Arts District space for the next several months.

View of "All Over the Place." Images courtesy of the Architecture and Design Museum.

The exhibitions include All Over the Place, an exhibition created by the New York City-based practice Preliminary Research Office that offers up a continuation of the firm's previous exhibition at the museum All Over the Place. For their latest creation, the designers have crafted a pair of scale models depicting urban landscapes. One model is scaled as a conventional site model while the second exists at a one-to-one scale.

Poster for The Assembly. Images courtesy of the Architecture and Design Museum.

A second exhibition, The Executive Condolence by Codi Barbini, consists of a video installation that collects 37 presiden...

Archinect, A+D Museum, and KCRW's DnA present: SHORTLISTED! symposium highlighting the current state of architectural commissions in Los Angeles.

2019-11-11T15:45:00-05:00

The Architecture and Design Museum (A+D), Archinect, and KCRW's DnA: Design and Architecture are coming together for SHORTLISTED!, a day-long symposium focused on highlighting the current state of earning, awarding, and judging architectural commissions in Los Angeles.

The event, drafted in conjunction with The Los Angeles Schools exhibition at A+D, will include headline talks by Dr. Lori Bettison-Varga, head of the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, and Christopher Hawthorne, LA’s Chief Design Officer and former architecture critic for The Los Angeles Times.

Crafted amid a period of upheaval surrounding Los Angeles's premier cultural institutions—including the demolition and reconstruction of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) complex, proposals to expand the La Brea Tar Pits, and plans for a new wing of the Natural History Museum, among several high-profile expansions and reorientations taking shape—the event will bring together architects, cultural leaders...

A deeper look at the institutions behind The Los Angeles Schools exhibition

2019-09-21T11:00:00-04:00

Los Angeles has long been a cradle for innovative architectural thinking. As a result, the Los Angeles area is not only filled with many architecturally significant sites, but is also home to some of the world's leading architectural institutions. This weekend, four of the region's schools of architecture will be participating in the Architecture and Design (A+D) museum's The Los Angeles Schools exhibition, a showcase of institutional pedagogies and the student work those ideas generate.

The exhibition aims to showcase Los Angeles's position as a pivotal node for architectural research, production, and exploration both in United States and internationally, as well.

Archinect has compiled statistics on the four participating schools and their respective academic programs to highlight the important role each plays in bolstering the region's reputation as a design-forward metropolis.

(Editors note: A range of regional schools of architecture were asked to participate in the exhibiti...

L.A.'s architecture schools are the focus in a forthcoming exhibition at A+D Museum

2019-09-11T09:00:00-04:00

The Architecture and Design (A+D) museum in Los Angeles has announced The Los Angeles Schools, a forthcoming exhibition that highlights the student work and pedagogical approaches of some of Los Angeles’s leading architecture programs.

The exhibition surveys some of the cutting-edge architectural thinking taking place at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), University of Southern California, Cal Poly LA Metro, and UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, and seeks to position Los Angeles as “a center for architectural production, investigation, and research charged with producing tomorrow’s leaders in the world of architecture and design,” according to a press release.

SCI-Arc's Graduation Pavilion "League of Shadows" by P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S

In a press release announcing the exhibition, A+D Museum executive director and chief curator, Anthony Morey said, “Discovering, experimenting and facilitating the ability of the public to explore what makes Los Angeles a center for A...

The Assembly returns to LA's A+D Museum next week

2019-08-28T14:09:00-04:00

The assembly returns this fall at A+D on September 7, 2019 from 7:00-10:30pm. The recurring event is an unveiling of A+D’s new rotation of exhibitions. This approach to hosting simultaneous exhibition openings is an expression of our mission to join together a diverse community in celebration of different disciplines of design and points of view. Join us on September 7th in celebration of four new exhibitions opening with beer, candy, and music.

The fall 2019 assembly opens four exhibits. This assembly will welcome 000 Magazine into the museum with Proof & Prototype in The Alcove Gallery. Proof & Prototype highlights the meticulous work it takes to create a quarterly publication focused on serving the reader above all else, through an expansive case study of 000 Magazine. This exhibition runs through 11.24.19.

The A+D’s newest exhibition space, The Portal, will be home to Virtual Bauhaus, an exhibition on the German school of art and design using the medium of virtual realit...

A+D Museum Opens Winter Exhibitions with Assembly Event

2018-12-04T13:21:00-05:00

The Assembly returns on December 8th, 2018 at 7pm with its third outing. The Assembly is the A+D's opening reception held in celebration of the museum's four new winter exhibition. This time we celebrate with food by DOAP Kitchen, a Los Angeles based virtual kitchen specializing in delivering curated home-style meals. With beer generously sponsored by Arts District staple and patron of the arts, Angel City Brewery. Form: Pioneering Design will also be presenting a single night installation by Timothy Robert Smith focusing on place making in LA through a panoramic train ride experience as a statement of Form's editorial relaunch in January. While at the event, do not forget to stop by Archinect Outpost to discover some of today's most creative, eclectic and hard to find publications focused on architecture, art and design.

This Assembly celebrates the opening of the museums winter exhibitions and its newly created design shop, the impermanent collection.

Disgusting Food Museum

The D...

Gallery X launched by the A+D Museum

2018-10-17T10:00:00-04:00

The A+D Museum has announced Gallery X, a branch of the A+D dedicated to curating public spaces and bringing the making and implementation of art to a wider more diverse audience. Gallery X aims to reach beyond the walls of the institution and produce local engagement through facilitate provocative urban and public canvases to the incredibly talented and provocative artists and designers of Los Angeles. Through designing the inclusion of art in the people’s urban landscape we bring a renewed vibrancy to Los Angeles.

Image supplied by a+d museum.

Gallery X was conceived as an initiative to bring progressive, young, and diverse artists to the forefront of public engagement by partnering with local institution, developers and real estate companies as a means to expanded the locations and means in which the museum can connect and curate within the area. With Los Angeles building at an incredible rate, the growth and guidance of public art have never been in such need and simultaneously...

Assembly returns at A+D Museum

2018-08-22T13:34:00-04:00

Saturday, September 8, 2018 from 6:30-10pm the A+D Museum will unveil its second out of The Assembly. The Assembly is a new tradition; it is a gathering. This approach to exhibition openings is an expression of the museum's mission to join together a diverse group in celebration of different disciplines of design and points of view. In this outing the museum will be celebrating 5 new exhibits being opened to the public.

Wireframes: The Visualization of Architecture

Wireframes. Branding and Image via Kilograph.

Wireframes is the first exhibit to track the art of architectural visualization since its inception. The exhibit presents a series of narratives, snapshots from the discipline's vibrant history. Through illustrations, projections, and interactive technologies the visitor is immersed in the story of architectural visualization. With over 30 artists participating, Wireframes exhibits the infinite possibilities for creative visual communication. Artists include Kilograph, Hayes Da...

A+D Museum launches Guest Curator Program

2018-03-28T09:00:00-04:00

The diversity and trajectories of architecture and design are at an all-time high and as important as ever, if not more and the role of the museum - our museum - is to produce a platform to present and promote progressive architecture and design equal to the rigor, enthusiasm, and diversity that exists within the culture we represent.

Embracing its refreshed direction and trajectory, The A+D Museum is proud to announce the launch of the Guest Curator Program. The program is a year-long experiment for testing and understanding traditional modes, models, and means to architectural and design curation.

The program invites five guest curators to work alongside the A+D to tackle all aspects of the manner in which museums and the dissemination of knowledge are addressed. The direct output of the program is not defined but is instead understood as a collection of tangents into publications, public events, conversations and curatorial adventures — if not to say; it is a mere melting pot for creative cultural endeavors. Working with today's mediums, questions, and inquiries, the program will look to set the groundwork for architecture and design's curatorial practices of tomorrow by understanding their limits today.

In a statement by the A+D, "Exhibitions, curation and experimentation through making at large are one of ...

Michael Maltzan Looks to the Future

2015-02-27T19:30:00-05:00

Los Angeles is a place that is “conducive to making ideas and forms at the same time,” asserted Michael Maltzan during a talk yesterday at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles. Part of the museum’s ongoing lecture series inCOLLABORATION, Maltzan’s talk focused on the relationship his projects hold to their infrastructural, urban and social contexts, as well as his conception of the role of contemporary architecture in the future of American cities.

The talk was divided into three categories: housing, civic or landscape design, and infrastructure. Yet as Maltzan moved from one to the next, he noted the conceptual permeability of these categories. On the one hand, he asserted that the movement between a house and an infrastructure project, for example, can be radically divergent. This is a fact with which Michael Maltzan Architecture has become intimately acquainted as they have greatly expanded their reach both programmatically and geographically in recent years. On t...

Book Launch: "L.A. [TEN]: Interviews on Los Angeles Architecture 1970s-1990s" author in conversation with Aaron Betsky, Sylvia Lavin

2014-02-06T12:34:00-05:00

Last Tuesday's book launch for L.A. [TEN]: Interviews on Los Angeles Architecture 1970s-1990s at the A+D Museum brought author Stephen Phillips in conversation with the book’s publisher, Lars Müller, and architecture critics (among other things) Aaron Betsky and Sylvia Lavin. The book is a collaborative effort, culling work from students in Cal Poly’s L.A. Metro Program in Architecture and Urban Design, Wim de Wit and Christopher Alexander of the Getty Research Institute, and Phillips himself. As an initiative that pits students alongside practicing professionals, combining oral history with journalistic investigation, L.A. [TEN] is both the artifact of an educational performance and a signpost in the continuing attempt to historicize L.A.’s messy architectural identity.

Lavin and Betsky kicked off the launch with miniature lectures, riffing on L.A.’s environmental and cultural context during the book’s era. Lacking the institutional validation of a strong publishing culture, archite...

"Never Built: Los Angeles" dares the City of Angels to dream big

2013-07-24T14:31:00-04:00

When driving through the streets of Los Angeles, one would expect the urban structures of a dynamic city to be as unique as its inhabitants. But that's not entirely the case, and why is that? The Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles poses that question--and what could have been--with their upcoming exhibit "Never Built: Los Angeles", which opens this Saturday.

Co-curators Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin worked with Clive Wilkinson Architects to bring to life an intriguing, alternate vision of Los Angeles. The highly anticipated exhibit will delve into the most ambitious proposed projects through various media like drawings, models, videos, and their accompanying writings.

After two years of digging through archives, Lubell and Goldin discovered rare images and untold narratives that have remained unseen by the public eye--even by native Angelenos. Imagine the city having more green space and parks if Olmsted and Bartholomew's 1930 "Plan for the Los Angeles Region" were not...