I took a little break from work-work-working today, and walked Downtown from my apartment with my roommates to go to Clifton’s Cafeteria. It’s a redwood forest-themed cafeteria style diner that’s been there since the ‘30s, and is amazing. Never in my wildest dreams did I think a redwood forest could be fodder for camp, and I don’t mean the smores kind. I encourage anyone who loves living kitsch (yes, that’s a problematic term, but it’s just oh so enjoyable) and is in Downtown LA to check this place out. It’s not the most delicious or even the cheapest place, but that’s not really the point.




The tiers remind me of a woodsy Harvard GSD


There's even a little cave chapel with spiritual audio/visuals - not to be missed!

Also, I did make it to the morning half of the USC conference I mentioned earlier (at the bottom of the post), and caught a great lecture by Marcelo Spina of Patterns. He showed some great projects, but it seemed very materials and process-focused, to the detriment of programmatic considerations. One comment in the Q&A session brought up that we weren’t shown a single plan or image of the interior of a large apartment building project that was the cap of Marcelo’s lecture. I’m sure this was due to the fact that the conference was materials and materiality themed, as I know Patterns’ work goes beyond plastic panels and simple twisting operations, and that they have beautiful and programmatically revealing drawings.


Marcelo at USC

You can see Marcelo talk about the gallery show of sensate design (the lions’ share coming from UCLA and SCI-Arc faculty) they curated in this video. Thanks to studiomate Tang for sending out that link.