Archinect - News

First California High-Speed Rail segment in LA County gets final EIR approvals

2024-07-09T11:18:00-04:00

The penultimate segment of the forthcoming California High-Speed Rail connection from Southern California to the San Francisco Bay Area has been approved for construction. The stretch begins at Palmdale in northern LA County and connects to Burbank. It will be followed by the final link between Downtown Los Angeles and Anaheim.

ABC7 first reported the milestone and said: “[O]fficials noted that the Palmdale-Burbank section will be largely underground, with four separate tunnels accounting for roughly 30 of the 38 miles. The tunnels will run beneath the Acton community and through the Angeles National Forest. Travel time between Palmdale and Burbank is expected to be about 17 minutes on the high-speed train.”

The initial renderings of the first four Foster + Partners and Arup station terminals were released last month. As per ABC, work is already underway at 25 sites across t...

The Guardian unpacks the demise of Lloyd Wright's Wayfarers Chapel in California

2024-06-02T08:00:00-04:00

This month, Wayfarers Chapel is being dismantled, an emergency attempt to save the structure’s irreplaceable redwood, steel and stone components in the wake of a devastating landslide. By taking it apart now, before it’s too twisted and broken to ever reconfigure, the chapel’s leaders hope to give it a second life someday on stable ground. They don’t have the cash yet for a rebuild, but they’re doing what they can at this critical moment: spending nearly half a million dollars on triage.

The group responsible for the Wayfarers Chapel announced its closure and plans to dismantle earlier this year following months of "accelerated land movement" beneath its 3.5-acre site in the Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Palos Verdes. The Guardian says the city is "working with chapel leaders to find a land-stable spot nearby to store the chapel’s pieces — one option is a former Nike missile site about 3 miles away."

The 73-year-old Lloyd Wright glass design had become an Instagram favorite and popular wedding destination in recent years.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Wayfarers Chapel (@wayfarers_chapel)

Lloyd Wright's landmarked Wayfarers Chapel to be disassembled due to landslides

2024-05-14T18:42:00-04:00

Lloyd Wright's historic closed Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, will be disassembled in the face of irreparable landslide damage, the group responsible for its stewardship announced via a press release Tuesday.

Architectural Resources Group will handle the disassembly work with great care, as the LA Times and other outlets have reported its structure is rapidly deteriorating from the movement underneath its foundation, which is now occurring at rates 2–3 times more severe than was recorded back in February.

The firm's principal, Katie Horak, told the outlet: "With each passing day, more of this material is lost or irreparably damaged. Our team is working against the clock to document and move these building components to safety so that they can be put back together again."

Previously on Archinect: Lloyd Wright's landmark Wayfarers Chapel closes indefinitely due to landslide threat

"The chapel will not be able to withstand much more damage before it becomes imposs...

Brightline West breaks ground on $12 billion Vegas to California high-speed rail project

2024-04-23T17:28:00-04:00

The $12 billion high-speed rail infrastructure project that will connect Las Vegas with various hubs in the Southern California region is off and running. Brightline West’s 218-mile loop is now under construction with a $3 billion push from the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the 2028 finish line in sight to coincide with LA's turn as host of that year's Summer Olympics and Paralympics.

Las Vegas Station aerial view. Image courtesy Brightline West

Las Vegas Station interior view. Image courtesy Brightline West

The trains will be operated at a maximal speed of 200 miles per hour, setting the North American record. (Another project between Raleigh, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, will commence soon.) Wes Edens, Brightline's founder, said: “Today is long overdue, but the blueprint we’ve created with Brightline will allow us to repeat this model in other city pairs around the country.”

Rancho Cucamonga Station exterior view. Image courtesy Brightline West...

High-speed rail line between Vegas and SoCal receives additional $2.5 billion funding

2024-01-26T11:04:00-05:00

The U.S. Department of Transportation has approved $2.5 billion for the Brightline West High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail project. As we have previously reported, the 218-mile line will connect Las Vegas to Southern California, running primarily along the I-15 median.

Electric trains on the line will be capable of reaching 186 miles per hour, fulfilling the journey in half the time to travel by car. The cost of the project currently stands at $12 billion, funded partly by an additional $3 billion allocation last month under the Infrastructure Act, and a $25 million to to the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority that will be used to construct stations on the line in Hesperia and Victor Valley, California.

Related on Archinect: U.S. Department of Transportation awards $6.1 billion in funding for high-speed rail projects in the American West. Image courtesy Brightline West

“As the first true high-speed rail system in America, Brightline West will serve as the blueprint for c...

U.S. Department of Transportation awards $6.1 billion in funding for high-speed rail projects in the American West

2023-12-06T14:36:00-05:00

The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced $6.1 billion in funding for two high-speed rail projects in Nevada and California that will make history upon their respective completions at the end of the decade.

Both the $8 billion Brightline West plan connecting Southern California to Las Vegas and the California High-Speed Rail project between Los Angeles and San Francisco will receive a total of $3 billion and $3.07 billion each.

The funding will help propel the former towards a formal project announcement that is expected by Friday, according to Reuters. The latter will aid in the development of a pared-down version of the larger California project that has been plagued by funding challenges for several years.

Brightline’s chairman Wes Edens told Reuters the funding marks a “historic moment that will serve as a foundation for a new industry and a remarkable project that will serve a...

Influential HHPA founder Norman Pfeiffer has passed away aged 83

2023-08-30T13:39:00-04:00

Norman Pfeiffer, an influential Southern California-based architect who founded the precursor to what is now Pfeiffer, a Perkins Eastman Studio, has passed away in Los Angeles after a short battle with illness.

Known for his contributions to the cultural and higher-education sectors of the region, Pfeiffer brought a collaborative approach to the design of public buildings that changed the ways architects think about a building’s effects on civic life and the public realm.

Born in Washington in 1940, Pfeiffer studied at Columbia University before founding the influential practice Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (HHPA) with Hugh Hardy and Malcolm Holzman in New York in 1967. Before the firm disbanded in 2004, it had garnered national recognition through its designs for the renovated Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the original Colburn School campus in downtown Los Angeles. An AIA Firm Award came in 1981, and Pfeiffer decided to expand his practice permanently to the Wes...

SWA unveils plans for new 1,200-acre park in Irvine, California

2023-04-28T13:57:00-04:00

A new master plan led by SWA Group has been revealed by the city of Irvine, California, showcasing a park design that, at 1,200 acres, would create one of the largest municipal park environments in the nation.

The so-called Irvine Great Park would transform the site of the historic former Marine Corps’ El Toro Air Station into what could evolve into a new national landmark for the 3.16 million residents of Orange County replete with educational offerings, modern sport and recreation facilities, and cultural attractions.

The framework SWA developed in unison with Kellenberg Studio calls for a five-zone subdivision of the site. A 200-acre Sports Park, Cultural Terrace, 60-acre Botanical Garden, and Veteran’s Memorial Park will join a linear park called the Bosque that features trails and a children’s play area. A central “Heart of the Park” zone completes the spatial design, featuring the 12,000-seat Great Park Amphitheater, a farm, and a three-tiered, 22-acre system of small lakes.

A...

Brightline's SoCal to Las Vegas high speed rail project could soon be underway

2022-12-05T15:45:00-05:00

A long-awaited high-speed rail project connecting Las Vegas to Southern California is reportedly ready to proceed in 2023 as an $8 billion proposal from rail operator Brightline is nearing permitting permission from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

According to the International Railway Journal (IRJ), the project would include three stops along a 49-mile stretch of land along Interstate 15. The railway system is expected to reduce car traffic between Los Angeles and Vegas by 3 million vehicles per year and transport passengers at speeds around 180 miles for a trip that would only take a little more than 2 hours from end to end. The company says the project would create up to 1,000 permanent jobs in both states.

A proposed map of the network showing a Metrolink connection to central Los Angeles. Image courtesy of Brightline.

Operations could begin as soon as 2026 or 2027 depending on the start date, which Brightline West CEO Mike Reininger says will happen in “a matter of w...

An Obama-era renewable energy project is finally about to break ground in Southern California

2022-06-17T19:05:00-04:00

The massive plot of land reserved for renewable energy production by an aging federal policy in Southern California’s Inyo County has finally gotten the go-ahead for development years after its initial announcement by the Obama Administration.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finally approved the start of construction of the two first projects contained in the 10.8 million-acre Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) after an elongated environment review and years of political toggling. The photovoltaic arrays are said to be capable of powering up to 130,000 homes and generating $5.9 million in what the Bureau calls “annual operational economic benefits” to the landlocked region.

Previously on Archinect: California to build solar panels over canals following UC graduate’s research

Construction will begin as early as the week of June 13 and could soon be followed by a potential third project pending BLM approval. The agency estimated that the plan requires a total invest...

Iconic Los Angeles home designer Harry Gesner has passed away at the age of 97

2022-06-14T16:41:00-04:00

Los Angeles’ architectural community is mourning the death of a legendary figure in its storied history of residential design after reports that Wave House architect Harry Gesner passed away Friday, June 10 at his Malibu home following a battle with cancer.

Best-known as the designer of several important residential commissions such as the Cole House, the Hollywood Boathouses, and Eagle's Watch which helped create a more nuanced visual culture for Southern California.

Gesner was a headstrong modernist who broke with certain midcentury conventions in pursuit of his own vision of landscape-derived naturalistic “nests” that were deliberately more responsive to both environmental elements and the local character.

An image of Gesner's Eagle Watch home from its current Airbnb listing. Image courtesy of Airbnb via super host Katherine VandeVoort

An avid surfer and gregarious regular in Hollywood circles, Gesner rubbed elbows with celebrities like Errol Flynn and is said to have learned to ...

'We all did': The Los Angeles Times' Patt Morrison on who authored the fate of LA's long-lost streetcars

2021-11-03T12:01:00-04:00

Red Cars didn’t just get people from Point A to Point B. They helped to create Point A and Point B. Towns like Burbank and Alhambra grew spectacularly once the Red Car reached them. Other sellers of land wised up and made sure their advertising told prospective buyers how to get there by Red Car; so did merchants and amusements. The system made even the farthest towns and neighborhoods feel connected.

The trolley system was not entirely undone in part by the nefarious hand of some elite corporate entities with decided interests in seeing an alternative to the then-burgeoning interstate highway system destroyed. Movies like Clint Eastwood's Changeling (2008) and (my favorite) Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) do a more-than-adequate job presenting the system as a great democratic uniter of Los Angeles’ proletariat, which is how many people view the defunct system correctly or incorrectly six decades after its operation was shut down.

The city is currently working on an expansion of its modern-day equivalent — the Metro — that will vastly increase access to the city’s Westside via a series of new Purple D line stations that will terminate near the campus of UCLA. The present east-to-west commute is considered to be one of the worst in Los Angeles county. The city is expecting 78,000 daily commuters on the line once construction is completed in 2027.

SoCal NOMA launches Diversity Equity and Inclusivity Challenge

2020-07-15T11:22:00-04:00

In a joint statement from the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles Chapter (AIALA) and the Southern California Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (SoCal NOMA), a new tool to expand inclusion has been announced: the SoCal NOMA Diversity Equity and Inclusivity Challenge. In describing the new initiative, the statement reads:

The SoCal NOMA DEI Challenge is a ten-point plan that delivers a pathway to diversity for Los Angeles firms through touchpoints including: mentorship, recruitment and promotion, and pro bono services to underserved communities. The results of its clear implementable actions will be tracked, in the same way as the American Institute of Architects (AIA) 2030 Challenge, to determine areas where improvement continues to be needed and to identify successes in reaching these critical goals.

The 10 "actions" that firms can undertake as a part of this challenge each have a scoring threshold with a maximum of 100 potential points to be achi...

SoCal-Las Vegas Virgin bullet train to begin construction next year

2019-12-19T09:00:00-05:00

While construction on the long-talked-about high-speed train between Las Vegas and Southern California is slated to begin next year, work probably won’t start in Nevada until the following year. Virgin Trains USA could break ground in the second half of 2020 on the 170-mile route between Southern Nevada and the Victor Valley area of Southern California...

The project is expected to be completed in 2023, but, according to state Department of Business Director Terry Reynolds, it cannot commence construction until the "record of decision" is received by the Federal Railroad Administration, reports Review-Journal.

Southern California looks to build its way out of the housing crisis

2019-08-23T13:30:00-04:00

Cities and counties in Southern California will have to plan for the construction of 1.3 million new homes in the next decade, a figure more than three times what local governments had proposed over the same period, according to a letter released by state housing officials Thursday.

Previously, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), a public agency that pursues regional planning efforts for Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Imperial counties, proposed zoning changes that would make room for just 430,000 new residences through 2029.

NOMA equips young students of color for an architectural future

2019-08-14T10:00:00-04:00

...Project Pipeline is designed to nurture the next generation of design professionals from middle school all the way through higher education and beyond...the ultimate goal of the initiative is to create a network of minority professionals across the country who will support one another and lift up the next generation in turn.

The 2019 SoCal NOMA Project Pipeline Architecture & Engineering Summer Camp put on by the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) included students between the ages of 10 and 16, and took place on three consecutive Saturdays in July, according to the Los Angeles Sentinel.

“Every year, we try to choose an exciting project that’s going on in the community at a place in the community that’s highly visible, that is accessible to our campers and that is in a community that they all live in,” said the camp's director, Eletrice Harris. This year, the students were tasked with creating "designs for the upcoming streetscape project, Destination Crenshaw, a 1.3-mile open-air museum that will celebrate and revitalize the art, culture, and spirit of Black Los Angeles."

Moreover, Professor Nina Briggs, who was a guest speaker at the camp, emphasized the importance of "designing for people," a valuable lesson for young aspiring practitioners. In the long run, NOMA's goal in this prog...

Photographer discovers Chicago's hidden modernist gems along Peterson Avenue

2018-09-18T15:20:00-04:00

The buildings aren’t the work of celebrated modernist architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. They bear no resemblance to the towering glass and steel monuments to postwar rationalism that you see downtown. They house doctors’ offices and dry cleaners, furniture stores and accounting firms. Some are vacant, their prim hedges and topiary gone to seed.

Architectural photographer and critic Lee Bey discovered a group of quirky modernist buildings on a section of Chicago's Peterson Ave. Overlooked and unkempt, these low-rise gems draw from Southern California's modernist vernacular prompting an unexpected, sunny and 60's nostalgia on the Northwest Side of the city. Check out these hidden structures documented here.

A 1950's replica town in San Diego aids patients with memory therapy

2018-09-17T14:12:00-04:00

On August 13, a brand-new town in Southern California welcomed its first residents [...] on a light-industrial stretch of Main Street in Chula Vista, a San Diego suburb. Then they emerged in Town Square®—a 9,000-square-foot working replica of a 1950s downtown, built and operated by the George G. Glenner Alzheimer’s Family Centers. Unlike the businesses around it hawking restaurant supplies and tires, Town Square trades in an intangible good: memories.

The new 50's replica town in San Diego is the largest US investment in reminiscence therapy for dementia and age-related cognitive impaired patients. The industrial warehouse has been transformed into a fake town of 14 storefronts complete with a diner, a movie theater, a pet store, a park-like square, and a city hall. Patients are aided in therapy by props from the years between 1953 and 1961. Several other locations are forthcoming, the next planned for a former Rite Aid in Baltimore.

Christopher Hawthorne's Frank Lloyd Wright documentary “That Far Corner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles” to air next week

2018-03-01T19:19:00-05:00

Why focus on Wright, American architecture’s equivalent of Abraham Lincoln, the giant who casts a shadow over his field big enough to blot out smaller and underrepresented figures? [...] Because the architect’s brilliant if forbidding Southern California houses, the most important of which were designed in a burst of creative energy during the first few months of 1923, remain mysterious, their meaning and inspiration as opaque as their heavy, richly patterned concrete-block facades.

Christopher Hawthorne's documentary, “That Far Corner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles”, focuses on aspects of the infamous architect's work which remain enigmatic. Filming inside eight Wright buildings, the project interviews around 20 people to present new insights around these mysterious works.

Hawthorne explains, "My overarching goal was to bring some new, sustained attention to a group of houses that have lingered too long, given their importance to the American architectural canon, in the relative shadows." The title “That Far Corner" originates from a phrase Wright used to describe Southern California in his autobiography.

As part of a new ARTBOUND season, the documentary airs next Tuesday March 6, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on KCET-TV. The episode will also stream online at KCET, as well as on Amazon, YouTube, Roku, and Apple TV following its broadcast. Tune in and decide what you make of Hawthorne's theory. As a bonus, several of the interviews occur inside residential designs by ...

Los Angeles keeps expanding its freeway "Autopia"

2018-02-23T17:42:00-05:00

If no one in 2018 would argue, as a young writer named David Brodsly did in 1981, that the "L.A. freeway is the cathedral of its time and place," or that it's the spot where Angelenos "spend the two calmest and most rewarding hours of their daily lives," as British architectural historian Reyner Banham put it with almost laughable enthusiasm a decade earlier, there's no doubt that both the practical and metaphorical meanings of the freeway continue to preoccupy Southern Californians.

Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne reflects on Southern California's ongoing love-hate relationship with its freeways.

William Krisel, Pioneer of Mass-Produced Mid-Century Modernist Housing, Dies at 92

2017-06-06T18:49:00-04:00

Esteemed mid-century modern architect William Krisel, known for his use of the butterfly roof, died in Beverly Hills on Monday at the age of 92.

Working largely in Southern California, Krisel designed over 30,000 homes in the region. Some of the architect’s most influential work was built in Palm Springs, California, a desert haven for modern architectural experimentation in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Krisel is best known for pioneering the modernist tract house, a response to the rise of post-war suburban developments. Employing brightly colored and patterned facades with a variety of asymmetrical roof forms, Krisel delivered modernist design principles on a mass-scale.

Photo by Darren Bradley/Courtesy of Darren Bradley.

“The concept for offering the builder various roof lines — flat, gables, inverted butterfly or whatever — is something that he sort of brought to the table so that they could essentially have very similar floor plans but have homes that looked quite different,” said Chris Men...

Eye candy: enjoy these freshly digitized, gorgeous contemporary photos of Southern California's finest midcentury modern architecture

2016-03-25T18:29:00-04:00

No longer confined to collecting dust in storage rooms, over a thousand slides documenting modern architecture's emergence in Southern California have been digitized by the USC Library, and are now available to view for free online.

The approximately 1300 slides were culled from the collections of Fritz Block and Pierre Koenig, which both belong to the USC Libraries. Koenig himself chose which slides he wanted digitized in the late 1990s, for a project that never fully came to pass, but from which a delightfully dated prototype website is still accessible. The slides feature work by various architects, mostly within Southern California.

Check out the full collection here, and a few select images below:

↑ John Lautner's Foster Residence in Sherman Oaks, from Pierre Koenig's collection.

↑ Frank Lloyd Wright's Millard Residence in Pasadena, from Fritz Block's collection.

↑ Pierre Koenig's Schwartz residence in Santa Monica (1996), from Pierre Koenig's collection.

↑ Albert Frey's Frey Residen...

The Ascendancy of Theory: writer and theorist Sylvia Lavin on Archinect Sessions One-to-One #13

2016-02-29T16:03:00-05:00

Writer, critical theorist and architecture academic Sylvia Lavin has been a fixture in the southern California art and architecture scene for the better part of the last 30 years. Currently serving as Director of the Critical Studies programs at UCLA's Architecture and Urban Design department, she also recently launched a summer curatorial program at SCI-Arc, called MEAT: Making Exhibitions in Architecture Today, and is widely published on issues of architecture and art practice.

Lavin spoke with me about growing up in an academic family, splitting her childhood between New York and Rome, and her perception of the art/architectural scene in southern California. Special thanks to UCLA for helping coordinate our interview.

Listen to One-to-One #13 with Sylvia Lavin:

iTunes: Click here to listen and subscribe to the new "Archinect Sessions One-to-One" podcast
SoundCloud: click here to follow Archinect
RSS: subscribe with any of your favorite podcasting apps via our RSS feed: http://onetoone...

So Cal has dumped a lot of money into transit projects, but there's been little pay-off so far

2016-01-27T20:36:00-05:00

For almost a decade, transit ridership has declined across Southern California despite enormous and costly efforts by top transportation officials to entice people out of their cars and onto buses and trains. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region's largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating.

"Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county's only transit option."

Related:

Eric Garcetti vs the Car: how LA's mayor plans to change the way Angeleños get around

2016-01-14T13:15:00-05:00

Now in his third year as mayor, the 44-year-old [Eric Garcetti] wants Los Angeles to be “the first postmodern city,” as he tells me, speaking in his art-filled office one morning in October. Throughout the past year, he has made a series of proposals that would fundamentally alter the city by deposing the automobile, which has reigned over Los Angeles for a half-century like a cocksure Third World despot... Call him the Che Guevara of Southern California infrastructure.

Related:

Is Waze to blame for heavy traffic on L.A. residential side streets?

2015-11-24T15:00:00-05:00

Waze sometimes sends drivers through little-used side streets such as Cody Road [in Sherman Oaks, Calif]...Some people try to beat Waze at its own game by sending misinformation about traffic jams and accidents so it will steer commuters elsewhere. Others log in and leave their devices in their cars, hoping Waze will interpret that as a traffic standstill and suggest alternate routes.

More about Waze on Archinect:

Throwback Throughway: when GPS fails, these gorgeous "mental maps" help you navigate

Waze takes on the ride-sharing market with new carpooling app

Arnold Schwarzenegger voices Waze app

Waze and its new uneasy bedfellows

"Take the 10 to the 110 to the 101": Why Southern Californians say "the" before freeway numbers

2015-11-11T13:14:00-05:00

Southern Californians have a distinctive — 'Saturday Night Live's' Fred Armisen and Kristen Wiig might say funny — way of giving directions. To get from Santa Monica to Hollywood, take the 10 to the 110 to the 101. Burbank to San Diego? The 134 to the 5. And, if you can, always avoid the 405. Why the definite articles?...Most of North America, in fact, omits the 'the' before route numbers.

More about L.A. freeways on Archinect:

Christopher Hawthorne on repairing L.A.'s long-broken relationship with its freeways

Largest wildlife overpass in U.S. proposed for L.A.'s 101 Freeway, could ease area's roadkill problem

Ode to the Stack, Los Angeles's iconic infrastructure

Southern California not so sprawling after all

LA's Unbuilt Freeways

Benjamin Ball, of Ball-Nogues Studio, shares some of his favorite Downtown Los Angeles destinations

2015-11-06T19:25:00-05:00

How do designers experience their cities as locals? No two people, let alone architects, perceive even the most frequented cities in the same way. There's no city that embodies that like the way Los Angeles does it. Beyond the ample sunshine and smog, juice diets, drought consciousness (or not), and the traffic jams that make up parts of present-day L.A., this jigsaw puzzle of a city perpetually intrigues and confuses both tourists and locals alike.

To get a fresh perspective on what to do around town, in addition to seeing the most obvious L.A. landmarks, Archinect got in touch with Ball-Nogues Studio co-founder Benjamin Ball to share some of his own travel tips. Give his suggestions below a shot and experience the City of Angels with some devilish fun.

Night Gallery and Francois Ghebaly Gallery

Night Gallery used to open at 10 pm when it occupied a dilapidated mini-mall in Lincoln Heights. Today, it has regular hours and is located behind a strip club in the vast industrial territor...

Largest wildlife overpass in U.S. proposed for L.A.'s 101 Freeway, could ease area's roadkill problem

2015-09-03T18:28:00-04:00

Mountain lions, bobcats and other wildlife would have less chance of becoming roadkill if [California] adopts a plan to build a [165-foot-wide, 200-foot-long] landscaped bridge over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills...Urbanization has taken a toll on Southern California’s mountain lion population, spurring battles over shrinking territory and a depletion of genetic diversity because of inbreeding.

Related on Archinect:

Christopher Hawthorne on repairing L.A.'s long-broken relationship with its freeways

2015-08-07T20:27:00-04:00

The truth is that Los Angeles, once a pioneer in defining the freeway’s place in urban life, has fallen behind other cities. From Dallas to Paris to Seoul, the most innovative ideas about freeways and how they can be redesigned are coming from places far from Southern California. It’s time for L.A. to catch up...

Following his recent review of the 405 Freeway expansion through the Sepulveda Pass, Christopher Hawthorne sums up why the time is ripe for Angelenos to refresh their perspectives on the city's freeways.