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John Southern

John Southern

Los Angeles, CA, US

 

About 

Urban Operations is a Los Angeles-based architecture and research firm founded by architect John Southern in 2005.The studio specializes in design/build work and research projects that seek to expand critical discourse within the design profession. Through its research division, Urbanops.org, the office explores a wide variety of design-based themes within contemporary culture and produce zines which illustrate and critique architecture’s impact on the built environment.  Urban Operations has extensive experience in collaborative projects, including building construction, and continues to seek out new avenues of expression in a wide variety of practical topics and conceptual avenues within the design disciplines.   The firm’s work has appeared in galleries and publications around the world.

Elsewhere:

John's Featured Articles on Archinect

With Peter Zumthor's LACMA in the Home Stretch, Is Los Angeles Entering its Post-Rational Phase?, Wed, Sep 4 '19

Despite vocal critical and popular outcry, Atelier Peter Zumthor's controversial Los Angeles County Museum of Art replacement project is moving full-steam ahead and is due to begin construction imminently.  LACMA Director Michael Govan recently sat in conversation with University of Southern ...

With Peter Zumthor's LACMA in the Home Stretch, Is Los Angeles Entering its Post-Rational Phase?
 

A review of Joe Day's "Corrections and Collections: Architectures for Art and Crime" (2013, Routledge), Tue, Sep 10 '13

“Since 2000, institutions of display and discipline have taken on transnational dimensions, many of them unanticipated and controversial.  In the most literal of convergences, yesteryear’s prisons have simply been reopened as today’s museums.”

A review of Joe Day's 'Corrections and Collections: Architectures for Art and Crime' (2013, Routledge)
 

Instigating Change with Common Ground, Tue, Sep 18 '12

In the age where cultural production has usurped industrial production as the driver for Western economies, the Venice Architecture Biennale represents a special kind of affair.  This three month-long bonanza of architecture and urban design represents a collection of diverse principles ...

Instigating Change with Common Ground
 

Education 

Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Los Angeles, CA, US, Masters, MArch2

Sep 1999 - Jan 2002
 

University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, US, Bachelors, Bachelors of Architectural Design

Jun 1993 - May 1997
 

Areas of Specialization