Archinect - News

A Trump Tower in L.A.? Thankfully, that was only part of "Never Built Los Angeles"

2017-02-15T00:51:00-05:00

In LA, Trump bragged he was going to spend a billion dollars on what he claimed would become the world’s tallest building. His architect Bill Fain delivered a gilded 125-storey office tower etched in a diamond-patterned exoskeleton...David Martin also devised a skyscraper: ‘When I told Ivana [Trump] the basis of the idea was to put two diamonds together, she lit up,’ Martin said. ‘I think they were divorced a week later.’

Whether you've been following the tumultuous life of proposed architecture projects in Los Angeles or not (a stretch of Grand Avenue, for example, has been undergoing elaborate proposals designed in part by Frank Gehry for almost forty years) "Never Built Los Angeles," a book by architectural critics at large Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin, shows us via The Guardian the almost-reality of a Los Angeles-based Trump Tower designed by Johnson Fain back in 1989.

"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...

L.A. imagined: The city that isn't

2013-01-23T20:12:00-05:00

It all leads one to ponder the what-if Los Angeles, to imagine the city that would exist today if the best proposals for remedying its ailments had been realized. Los Angeles would now include a ring of thousands of acres of urban and regional parks, a bold, space-age airport, a winged nature center for Griffith Park and hillside housing developments sculpted to the contours of the landscape rather than sitting on graded and terraced scars. We would be living in a very different city.

Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell talk about their co-curated show, Never Built: Los Angeles, which is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.