Archinect - News

SOM unveils new bus shelter designs for a more equitable future LA

2024-07-07T08:00:00-04:00

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has shared photos of its new bus shelter designs for the City of Los Angeles.

The LA STAP (short for Sidewalk and Transit Amenities Program) shelters are the first prototype designs for the initiative that will eventually install 3,000 shelters and 450 shade structures in need-based locations across Los Angeles over the next decade. Officials from the city's Bureau of Street Services (aka StreetsLA) met in Tarzana last month to preview the designs.

Image: James Michael Juarez © SOM

There, they bore witness to what will eventually be unique new additions to the city's visual landscape. Another 250 total are expected to be installed by June 2025.

Image: James Michael Juarez © SOM

The configurable designs are said to be inspired by the California Modernism movement and will display a digital art program and feature smart lighting technology.

Image: James Michael Juarez © SOM

Leading the contract for STAP is Tranzito-Vector, a joint venture between smart mobi...

Supergraphics pioneer Barbara Stauffacher Solomon dies at 95

2024-05-13T19:06:00-04:00

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, the influential California-based graphic designer and landscape architect, passed away on May 7th in San Francisco at the age of 95.

Stauffacher Solomon died a prominent member of the design community whose career advanced aside an unusual synthesis of modern art, design, and architecture with many noted collaborators in all three channels and will be particularly remembered for the Supergraphics paintings she made in the late 1960s while in residence at the Sea Ranch utopian community.

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon's Land(e)scape, 2018. Image courtesy Rob Corder/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0 Deed)

“It took a lot of verve for Bobbie to survive in a hostile environment, let alone blaze a trail,” biographer Joseph Becker recalled to the New York Times’ obituary section. “But she had the ability to create these amazing works that reflect her attitude that there should be something fun about the spaces we inhabit. In graphic design, landscape architecture, and her boo...

SCI-Arc founder Ray Kappe's final residential design hits the market for $4.2M in Los Angeles

2023-11-29T18:24:00-05:00

Late SCI-Arc founding director Ray Kappe’s final residential design has hit the market in Venice Beach, California, for a listed price of $4.2 million.

The 2,482-square-foot home has three bedrooms and was originally built in 1947. Kappe began the commission in 2019 (the same year he passed away), designing for the owner a two-story addition that added a garage and small recreation room to the property at 938 Amoroso Place. The renovation was completed earlier this year at an undisclosed cost. Tracey Becker of COMPASS is the listing’s agent.

Image courtesy Realtor.com

“When he came to look at the property, he was impressed with the concept of the tree fern garden and how to incorporate the house within that context,” the anonymous seller told Realtor.com. “Ray was also interested in designing a home that went beyond the normal postage-stamp-sized lot home, by continuing his signature style of getting lost in a space — where everywhere you looked, an importan...

EYRC's Takashi Yanai and Patti Rhee unveil their Japanese and California Modernism-inspired family home

2020-04-16T11:52:00-04:00

Husband and wife duo, Takashi Yanai and Patti Rhee, both partners at EYRC, have unveiled their recently completed redesign of their family home, the Kingsland Residence. Takashi leads the residential studio at EYRC and Patti heads the commercial studio. The couple's home is located in Mar Vista, between Culver City and Venice, CA. Mixing both Californian and Japanese modernism, the design approach was to bring the outside in.

Photo by Stephen Schauer

Photos by Paul Vu

By painting the home matte black, more focus was brought to the exterior landscape and gardens, which were designed my Terremoto. Regarding the collaboration with Terremoto, Takashi said, "I wanted the exterior spaces to be a place of repose, and the focal point of your experience when indoors especially in the dining room. The landscape design is a mash-up of a Japanese garden with California appropriate plants." Inside the home, an expansive sliding door frames the backyard area, connecting the interior to the outdoor ...

Beverley Thorne, last Case Study architect, dies at 93

2017-12-11T17:16:00-05:00

Beverley "David" Thorne, the last of the Case Study architects and the designer of Dave and Iola Brubeck’s modernist California and Connecticut homes, died December 6 in Sonoma, Calif. He was 93. [...] Bev designed Harrison House, Case Study No. 26, in San Francisco in 1963.

Case Study House #26. Photo via csh26.info.

The Case Study #26 "Harrison House" Thorne designed in San Rafael, California is the only Case Study House in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sunset Magazine Kicked Out of Their Beloved Cliff May-designed HQ

2014-12-17T12:25:00-05:00

In a letter to employees Wednesday, Time Inc. announced that it had sold Sunset’s serene seven-acre Menlo Park, Calif., campus of carefully designed gardens and 1950s ranch-style buildings to Embarcadero Capital Partners, a San Francisco real estate investment and management company.

This is so sad, as it very likely means the demolition of Cliff May's beautiful and quintessentially Californian design. I would have loved to have visited the campus.

I can easily credit Sunset Magazine with being a major influence on my decision to become an architect: as a pre-teen I pored over their 1974 "Garden & Patio Building" book - I literally read every single word multiple times.

My family had a subscription to the magazine, as have I for most of my adult life. In fact, just last night I made a recipe (Corn Flour Orange Chiffon Cake) from the current issue to bring to our office holiday party.

So sad. California 'necters, make sure to go visit this legendary place while you still can! Info on visiting here.

In Residence: Ray Kappe

2014-11-23T23:39:00-05:00

A modern masterpiece of glass and redwood, the home of architect Ray Kappe is often referenced as one of the greatest residences in Southern California, looks much the same today as it did a half-century ago—a contemporary extension of the early SoCal glass-house tradition, begun decades earlier by architects like Rudolph Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and Harwell Hamilton Harris.

I remember writing this back in 2006 for an AIA convention piece.

"Kappe Houses are interesting in that they visually take you to places without you physically moving an inch. His spaces don't stop. You can look but you won't see a line that doesn't depart, travel, connect or fly away into the canyons. He is daringly modern, moving you through the bottlenecks of organized combustion before dropping you in his poetry of space, architectural construction, scale, light and experiment."

Did Steve Jobs’ modernist childhood home by Eichler incubate his design vision?

2011-11-01T14:05:22-04:00

It turns out that Job’s masterful use of modern design could have been incubated by growing up in a home which was built by the father of the California modernist movement, Joseph Eichler. The idea is not too far fetched - in Walter Issicason's biography on the design pioneer, Jobs admits "that his appreciation for Eichler homes instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products for the mass market".

From Inhabitat