Archinect - News

A+D Museum presents 'The Assembly'

2018-06-26T13:01:00-04:00

This Saturday, June 30, 2018 from 6:30-10pm the A+D Museum will unveil The Assembly. The Assembly is a new tradition; it is a gathering. This approach to exhibition openings is an expression of the museum's mission to join together a diverse group in celebration of different disciplines of design and points of view.

The inaugural event opens five exhibits open for the summer season. The Room gallery houses Cycle & Pattern, a fashion exhibition in collaboration with Otis College. A+D premiers its first outing with GCP, the museum’s curatorial lab, in The Alcove gallery with 3-Ways, a projection-based show exploring themes of scale and communication. Sunset 2050, in The Alley gallery, is a breathtaking retrospective and futuristic interpretation of Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles with UCLA. Doppelgängers, in The Lane gallery, offers a view into the architectural mind of Patrick Tighe Architecture. The Island features Back to Front, an outdoor installation by StereoBot & Oasys taking on the...

Tomorrow — Art Share L.A. to unveil their redesign by Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects

2017-06-14T13:56:00-04:00

Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects teamed up with notable non-profit Art Share L.A. to redesign the group's creative art space at the corner of 4th Street and Hewitt, in Downtown Los Angeles' Arts District. Art Share L.A. will officially reveal the new design during an open house tomorrow night, June 15 from 7-10 p.m.

Photo via Art Share L.A.

The open house event will feature a talk by Lorcan O'Herlihy, exhibitions, poetry, and performances. Event is free, but space is limited. RSVP here.

Here's a quick peek of LOHA's redesign.

Entrance. Rendering courtesy Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects.

The redesign for the colorful 28,000 square-foot building features a more flexible, open reconfiguration of galleries, classrooms, a theater, and other multi-functional spaces with live-work studios.

Galleries. Renderings courtesy Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects.

Theater. Rendering courtesy Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects.

Proposed plan. Courtesy Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects.

In case you missed it, listen to Archinect's recent...

BIG proposes massive, gridded development for the LA Arts District

2016-12-12T13:15:00-05:00

Bjarke Ingels Group is the latest big fish to join the development frenzy along the LA River in advance of its rehabilitation. The Gallo family, of vinous fame, has commissioned the Copenhagen/New York-based firm to create a proposal for a city block-sized development in the Arts District. The building, which would comprise two connected buildings reaching 30 stories tall in some places, is for a site along the edge of the LA River not far from the Southern California Institute of Architecture and Michael Maltzan’s prone behemoth, One Santa Fe.

In total, the project, dubbed 670 Mesquit, would contain nearly 800,000 sq. ft. of office space, two boutique hotels, 250 rental units and a slew of restaurants and shops. Following the strictures of Measure JJJ, which passed by a wide margin in the last election, the building would have 41 affordable units. Additionally, the building would host a small museum or public sculpture park that would connect to a massive “deck” stretching over the ...

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...

Bureau Spectacular's first retail project is now open in L.A.'s Arts District

2016-09-12T18:52:00-04:00

Bureau Spectacular etched their mark into Downtown L.A.'s Arts District with the new Frankie flagship store that opened last Friday, celebrating the relaunch of the high-end streetwear label as well as the firm's first retail store design. Frankie founder Kevin Chen worked alongside Jimenez Lai in designing the store. For starters, Lai created the striking graphic novel-like facade on the building's revamped exterior — but that's where the fun starts.

Inside, the 2,000 square-foot retail space has a room-within-a-room setup that alludes to Lai's earlier works like the “Speechbuster / 99 Chairs” sculpture and the “Briefcase House”.

Visitors will encounter one of Bureau Spectacular's Super-Furnitures, described as “a structure too small to be a building but too large to simply be a piece of furniture”. The nine-piece, 28-foot-long modular staircase is an interactive jigsaw structure that can be assembled into a runway or to provide seating, or disassembled into individual pieces for var...

Museum at the front line: One-to-One #33 with Dora Epstein Jones, executive director of the A+D Museum

2016-08-08T14:48:00-04:00

Dora Epstein Jones is the newly minted executive director of the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles. With a doctorate in Architectural History, Theory and Criticism from UCLA, Epstein Jones came to A+D after nearly 15 years at SCI-Arc, where she led the coordination of humanities and theory courses, and served as the founding coordinator of the General Studies program.

Now situated in L.A.’s booming Arts District, A+D is neighbor to downtown’s own museum renaissance, not to mention the SCI-Arc campus. In our interview, Epstein Jones imagines how A+D could become the L.A version of Storefront, while working to keep it accessible to the local community.

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A+D Museum appoints Dora Epstein Jones as new Executive Director

2016-06-30T17:34:00-04:00

A little over one year since relocating to Downtown LA's Arts District, big changes continue to occur at the A+D Museum. Yesterday, the Museum announced Dora Epstein Jones as their new Executive Director, succeeding Tibbie Dunbar, who officially resigned from the position on February 1. Dunbar served as director for a nearly 12-year tenure that included notable exhibitions like “Never Built: Los Angeles”.

As only the A+D's second executive director, Epstein Jones will work to carry out the Museum's mission of being “locally focused and globally relevant”. Before joining the A+D, she served as Coordinator of History and Theory and then Coordinator of General Studies at SCI-Arc for 15 years. Widely known as a generous supporter of architects and designers, Epstein Jones has several written publications, lectures, symposia, and exhibitions all dedicated to “the public display of architecture and design across a spectrum of concerns, from aesthetic to social.” She also received a Ph.D. ...

OMA releases renderings of event + project space in Dubai

2016-03-16T14:09:00-04:00

Dubai's desire to become a (tasteful) global cultural center is gaining further traction with an OMA-designed events and project space for local art-scene hub Alserkal Avenue. The 1,000 square meter gallery features four movable walls which can either rotate or slide within a flexible floor plan, and a set of transparent sliding entry doors that are designed to erase the boundary between inside and out (and visually connect the space to the exterior, plant-laden public square). A customized concrete spray will cover the exterior walls.

This visual continuity echoes Alserkal Avenue Director Vilma Jurkute's hope that the space will "facilitate a closer dialogue between east and west while strengthening the infrastructure for the arts locally.”

How L.A. can reboot its "creative economy" so artists can actually live in town

2015-12-11T14:26:00-05:00

But if L.A. is going to remain a creative capital, its civic and cultural leaders are going to need to do more than offer really great talk about how great we are...This can start with the Otis Report on the Creative Economy...If this report is to be more than just a feel-good data dump, it could use some solid recommendations on how L.A. compares to other cities culturally and how we might improve the situation for artists and cultural organizations, both small and large.

More about arts districts on Archinect:

Venice Beach's ongoing grapple with the tech titan invasion

Downtown LA's vision of an architecture and design super cluster

How one urban planner is helping revamp a Miami suburb "without gentrification"

With a little compromise, illegal urban squats like Ljubljana's Metelkova Mesto can do a city good

How Many Artists Does It Take to Make an Arts District?

Downtown LA's vision of an architecture and design super cluster

2015-04-22T14:23:00-04:00

When the Architecture + Design Museum announced their impending move to the Arts District late last year, their short-term (two-year) lease had some wondering what was in the cards for the museum's future. [...]after their lease is up, the A+D Museum is hoping to move again—into a new building that will house it, the American Institute of Architects' Los Angeles chapter (AIA/LA), and the much-anticipated Center for Architecture and Urban Design Los Angeles (CALA), a non-profit "design commons."

How Many Artists Does It Take to Make an Arts District?

2014-09-10T14:46:00-04:00

Just north of where the University of Pennsylvania transformed its surroundings, and amid Drexel University’s big expansion plans, one Drexel school is looking for ways to coalesce that West Philly arts community. Mantua, long challenged by poverty, population decline and crime, has had a higher profile in the past year due to its Promise Zone designation and the raved-about art project, Funeral for a Home.

Long-time Residents Worry About Changes to Los Angeles Art District

2014-07-30T17:31:00-04:00

...In the 1970s, the streets east of Little Tokyo and west of the L.A. River made up a dingy district of hollowed-out warehouses that landlords rented to artists who needed a lot of space for little money [...] Then a decade ago, what started with a new restaurant on this block and then another up that street, turned into an avalanche of development [...]