Archinect - News

Frances Anderton says LA must end the stigma of apartment dwelling to survive

2023-01-12T17:38:00-05:00

Anderton’s book provides further powerful evidence that density is not something to be scared of, but is fertile ground for architectural invention, creating more neighbourly, walkable communities, and ultimately making Los Angeles a more livable city for all.

The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright joined Common Ground: Multifamily Housing in Los Angeles author Frances Anderton for a walking tour of select historic apartment buildings that included Richard Neutra’s 1937 Strathmore Apartments in Westwood (noteworthy as the first apartment Charles and Ray Eames rented after they moved to the city in 1941) and the Irving Gill’s 1910 Horatio West Court, whose new neighbor is a just-finished transitional housing project from Brooks + Scarpa.

“There’s still an ingrained cultural stigma here, that renting an apartment means you haven’t quite made it," Anderton reminds us. The city's broken political culture, meanwhile, isn't making the issue much easier.

The former host of KCRW's popular radio show, DnA, has been a frequent collaborator on Archinect. Anderton joined us in December 2020 on the Archinect Sessions podcast to talk about her career and "the backstory behind her transition from architecture student to journalist to radio personality."

Lis...

Radio personality, Frances Anderton, joins Archinect Sessions for year-end episode

2020-12-24T13:56:00-05:00

On our year-end show Donna, Ken and I are joined by Frances Anderton. For our Los Angeles listeners, Frances's voice is probably very familiar to you. Frances is the host of DnA, the radio show the focuses on architecture and design on KCRW, the local favorite station among architects in the Southern California region.

A few weeks ago Frances broke the news that she would be leaving the beloved radio show at the end of the year, after an 18-year run. Today she joins us to tell us about work with DnA, the backstory behind her transition from architecture student to journalist to radio personality, and gives us a hint at what she'll be doing next.

Later in the episode, the four of us discuss some of the bigger news stories that helped define what 2020 meant for architects. We also share what we're each looking forward to as we enter into a new year.

Listen to episode 160 of Archinect Sessions, “Goat Wisdom with Frances Anderton”.

iTunes: Click here to listen, and click the "Subscrib...

DnA: Design and Architecture, KCRW radio show hosted by Frances Anderton, to go off the air

2020-09-18T12:11:00-04:00

Amid a dramatic staff downsizing at leading Southern California public radio station KCRW, it was reported that the popular show and podcast DnA: Design and Architecture hosted by Frances Anderton will be discontinued from mid-December after being on the air for 18 years.

The Los Angeles Times writes that the cuts "represent a loss of 18% of the NPR affiliate’s staff, reducing it to 127 full- and part-time employees. It comes less than two years after the station began moving into its $38-million media center on the campus of Santa Monica Community College."

In a Sep-15 tweet, Anderton stated: "It's official: 24 of us are taking buyouts from @KCRW, mine effective mid-Dec. Working there w/ huge talents has been the gift of a lifetime. So has the chance to spread the word about LA design + arch. I'll keep on doing so (unless I go start my fantasy goat farm). Stay tuned!"

It's official: 24 of us are taking buyouts from @KCRW, mine effective mid-Dec. Working there w/ huge talents has b...

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...

Listen to 'Next Up: The LA River' Mini-Session #1 with KCRW's 'Design and Architecture' host Frances Anderton and LA Times architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne

2016-11-16T12:44:00-05:00

When Frank Gehry's office was first attached to the L.A. River's master plan and redevelopment, the river began attracting fresh attention over a project that had already been evolving for decades. This October, in an attempt to do justice to the river's complexity and history (and the accompanying urbanist discourse), Archinect hosted 'Next Up: The LA River'—a live podcasting interview series with an array of architects, planners, artists, and journalists with varying perspectives on the subject.

We're now eager to share those conversations with everyone as eight Mini-Sessions, released as part of our Archinect Sessions podcast. Myself, Paul Petrunia and Nicholas Korody moderated the conversations, which took place at the Los Angeles Architecture + Design Museum on October 29, 2016. While we reached out to them, unfortunately no representatives from Gehry's office were able to take part.

Our first Mini-Session was moderated by myself, with Frances Anderton (host of KCRW's 'Design and...

Needle exchange: a look at Herzog & de Meuron's transformative "needle" tower development in DTLA's arts district

2016-09-29T19:27:00-04:00

The name of Herzog and de Meuron's proposed new development for downtown Los Angeles' arts district, 6 AM, seems like an hour/mindset that most of its current residents experience only because they stayed up much too late. But no one can stop the dawn of high-concept gentrification from breaking all over the district of former abandoned warehouses, especially when that concept promises to embody the so-called "DNA"of Los Angeles.

According to an article by Frances Anderton, de Meuron purposefully nixed medium height buildings from 6 AM's design in favor of nose-bleed high rises and squat, table-like mixed-use structures, as this was reflective of how he views Los Angeles:

“The high rise for us is important to make a difference between the low and the high because I think this is a part of specificity of Los Angeles. It’s either flat or it’s high. You don’t have in between bulky buildings. So (we’d) rather do extremely low and then you go higher. (The towers are) needle like — it shows...

Frank Gehry, Closet Classicist

2012-10-01T19:03:00-04:00

One of his alumni, the highly regarded architect Michael Maltzan, and a designer on the Walt Disney Concert Hall, says "most of the time people understand his buildings from their surface but deep down Frank is a classically trained architect. Whether that's historical classicism or a classical modernism, the foundations of that work and what's really operating under the surface is this incredibly controlled sense of order which allows for the buildings to have a seemingly intense animation".

FRANCES ANDERTON - Architectural Critic

2012-03-24T11:28:37-04:00

Frances Anderton came to Los Angeles via Bath, England in 1991 and like her compatriot Reyner Banham, fell in love with the city. As a longtime producer and host of radio shows Which Way, LA? and DnA: Design and Architecture respectively, Anderton has spent the last 25 years of her professional and personal life exploring the relationship between L.A.'s architecture, politics and design.