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...

Brooks + Scarpa reveals Westside LA transitional housing project inspired by Irving Gill

2022-10-24T14:38:00-04:00

Brooks + Scarpa has released images of their recently-completed Rose Apartments complex, a community housing initiative for formerly homeless teenage youths transitioning into adulthood in Venice, Los Angeles.

The 20,900-square-foot, four-story design includes some 35 units of highly affordable residences for young adults who are at risk for homelessness after being separated from the state-administered system at the age of 18.

Image courtesy Brooks + Scarpa

Located nearby Venice Beach's central retail strip, the scheme takes its cues from Irving Gill’s neighboring Horatio West Court apartments and other examples of courtyard housing that predominated the city in the years prior to the Second World War.

Image courtesy Brooks + Scarpa

Per the architects: “The courtyard is only one aspect of a successful design. By including affordable housing for transitional aged youths, it allowed the non-developer to take advantage of California State Assembly Bill AB7...

Irving Gill, Homer Laughlin and the Beginnings of Modern Architecture in Los Angeles

2018-04-02T18:26:00-04:00

Gill, for Christ's sake, get your hair cut.-FLW

If you think architecture has a dense web of characters and influences now, read So. Cal's arch historian John Crosse's account of the development of modernism in Los Angeles, going all the way to Adler & Sullivan's prestigious office in the Auditorium Building in Chicago.

Front elevation, George Steckel Residence, Normandie Ave. near 4th St., Los Angeles, 1910. Courtesy of UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Irving Gill Archive.

"The evolution of modernism in Los Angeles architecture can arguably be traced back to the Auditorium Building offices of Adler & Sullivan in the early 1890s. The Auditorium Building was Adler & Sullivan's crowning achievement and met with rave reviews in the local and national press and trade journals as setting the bar for buildings of its typology upon its 1889-90 completion. The now famous partners and their chief draftsman Frank Lloyd Wright excitedly moved their offices into their masterpiece of engineering and interior design's tower ...

The house that built Los Angeles?

2011-07-16T23:55:06-04:00

"The Dodge House in West Hollywood was considered one of the most architecturally significant American houses of the 20th century. Designed in 1914 and completed in 1916, the masterwork by architect Irving Gill made a profound break from the traditional pitched-roof, symmetrical house design ...

... Gill had the radical notion to elevate reinforced concrete to the "architectural importance of stone," but perhaps more important than the house's form — a horizontal box lacking roof overhangs, surface details or other ornaments — was a revolutionary vision of what a modern Southern California house could, and would, be."

Irving Gill and Dodge House via Esther McCoy

2011-06-20T19:56:00-04:00

The bulldozers wait for the trees and gardens, which, for a half century, matured. For the House, which, time has not touched. We prize the distant past,but if the immediate past is ripped away, there will be no distant past for the future. The continuity will be broken. Our heritage diminished. There is a hole in the fabric of History. - Ester McCoy

Dodge House 1916 (1965)
This film, produced by architectural historian Esther McCoy, documents the Walter Luther Dodge house in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, and the life of its architect, Irving John Gill. The film was made to advocate for its preservation during a 7-year battle to save it from the wrecking ball. The campaign failed, and the house was destroyed in 1970. This film, created to help save the house, now serves as the building's best surviving visual record. For more information on Dodge House and Esther McCoy, see her papers at the Archives of American Art.

Via, with special thanks to my friend John Crosse, Historian.