no offense to archinect-- i am just wondering if anyone is actually going to this? it doesnt seem like many people here are interested.....or at least the ones i've talked to. would like to know if they are getting a good response...

desmodo - this isn't an archinect event. we are just one of the sponsors.

i've spoken to a ton of people who plan on attending, so i must be hanging around a different crowd. i think it's an opportunity to create exposure and excitement for the local A+D scence - hopefully something great will emerge from it. we'll know by monday i guess.

This is a big event and many people I know from san francisco are going. It seems to me that there are a range of different interest groups attending...die-hard modernists, historians, collectors to emerging young designers. I think this is what makes it exciting.

There better be somebody there, we're flying in from texas. Get ready cali....

yeah- CA Boom has been advertising like crazy, and truth be told, some of the organizers don't strike me as being terribly professional. but let's wait until monday to see how it turns out. hopefully hollywood's presence won't dumb it down too much.

paul- i know this is not an archinect event. i had delt with the caboom people when the fest was originally supposed to be held in march and agree with lateral-- they were not very professional in terms of organization and when it got postponned it seemed to be a sign that things were not going well.

i am sure we hang out in different crowds since i have never met you. i work with a lot of different design firms and no one seemed to be interested in attending. i was just trying to get a fix on whether people were attending or not. not trying to make a statement or anything. just curious.

desmodo - we have met actually.

Whoa, Paul's a stalker.

i'm watching you right now

AHHH!

whoa you are a stalker. i think you are right....we may have met, maybe 2 years ago? but we dont hang out. i'm old and sad to say dont go out that much any more.

anyway, glad to know these caboom people got their butts in gear-- it definitely seems like a better group than the first time around. will someone post a review?

not really a stalker - i just happen to see everyone's email addresses and i recognized yours. i'm equally curious about how this event will unfold. for the sake of the local architecture and design scene i hope it is a success. there aren't many other similar events to compare it to. we'll post an unbiased review monday.

excellent.

let us know if brad is really there for the opening!

for the sake of my visiting 16 year-old sister who will be joining us tonight, brad better be there!

There seemed to be a decent enough turn out last night. I'm looking forward to seeing how the normal days of the festival unfold... looks to be promising.

The "stars" were not the draw for me... and I'd have to say that Tori Spelling being there did dumb it down ;-) But the point really is as Pual said: exposure and excitement for the local A+D scence.

http://www.landliving.com/articles/0000000380.aspx

And another thing, as architects and designers we SHOULD be interested and excited about this event. If we can't get excited about our own profession and have an interest in promoting it, then what's the point?

we definitely should be excited that someone is organizing an event like this. I think those of us who dealt with the original group who were putting this together were put off by the people running the show, not the idea of the event. I dont mean individuals, just the overall sense that things were not getting done and it was extremely disorganized.

It sounds like they got some professional help to steer it in the right direction.

ps. so was brad there or what?

i was pleasantly surprised by the turn-out and the quality of the presentations last night. i took some quick shots as we browsed - they're uploaded to the Event Photos gallery.

your sister is a knock-out man.

: a fun, energetic, explosion of design talent.

I went to the Mayne + EOM panel discussion and took a tour of CA Boom this evening. IMHO the price was a bit steep, but then again, I did not preregister.

To be honest, I went for the lecture and to have some beers after work. I forgot about the two prefab 'homes'... so they were engaging for a few minutes. Couldn't the modular guy at least level out his floor... sheezus. The first thing I thought was, "Is this thing off kilter or what?" You'd think psychologically -- and literally -- a designer would know that this 'throws people off'.

Some cool lamps, drawer pulls, LED address signage & door bell, nice red laptop chair, remote control lights, cleavage and a full bar was cool... complete with DJ. Sod couches were intriguing, though wet, and I saw numerous attendees sit up with a wet spot on the seat of their pants. If my babe was not working, it would have been a cool place to hang all night. Especially, if friends could have met their. Again, I was in it for the lecture.

EOM brought babe and kid in tow. Mayne looked like a hip grandpa. I happened to enjoy their banter about politics and project scale. If EOM said his intentions were to be working at an 'ENORMOUS' scale one more time, I would have needed a shot or two of jager to blur the monotone manifesto. He's intelligent. He's the director of SCI-Arc. He was trying to show he's still young by bringing 2 year old. Mayne brought a gaggle of office staff, and as always, constantly fished for agreement -- which I find to be like a friendly salesman's tactics. Occasionally, I got a bit lost with his political diatribe; he actually described our government in typical 60's fashion as a FUCKIN' _____ (can't remember the exact words). But, the explative was a bit shocking. All-in-all, I like them both; Mayne a bit more for his personality. Moss a bit more for his ego.

Well that's my synopsis for Friday between 4:30 and 7:00 PM. Did any of you attend the same discussion? What did you get out of it? I'm a little pissed that the discussion following Mayne+EOM was postponed. I only had a small window of time to check out CA Boom and both of those discussions are what pushed me to go. If any of you are considering going... plan on 1-2 hours for exhibits and 1-2 hours for lectures and drinks.

CA Boom has serious potential, and I was totally glad I went. The Civic is a cool venue -- I would go back but make sure to go and wander around having enough time and cash to make it a quazi-clubber evening. Dress to impress a bit, cause it is a bit of a scene. Parking is $8 unless you can get a meter.

Sidenote: If I have to see one more Segway, I'm going to figure out a way to make it tip consistantly.

I will have to second what abracadabra said.

"your sister is a knock-out man."

she's 16 guys....relax.

virtual-architect - thanks for the update, and Nice reporting.

"Mayne looked like a hip grandpa." LOL

(Has anyone heard the story of a lecture he gave for some graduating high school students, with parents in attendance? Pretty hilarious.)

fill us in on that mayne talk...

We're posting little daily reports with images:
http://www.landliving.com/categories/Events.aspx

Like to hear details on that Mayne talk too...

John E X:

No, I have not heard the high school Mayne talk excerpts.

Who? What? When? Why? Where?

thom mayne is the nicest guy. i bet he'd make an excellent guest speaker at a high school. he's the quintessential 'underachiever' done good.

as for EOM- blegh.

an architect friend whom i respect, went to the opening and described the 'boom' as a 'ping'. 75 bucks and there was nothing more than a rib to eat without potatoes. but than again he is from paris and has a feel for higher decibels, i suppose. he also mentioned 'local trade show'.
his words not mine. i wish better next year.

Mr. Mayne's lecture he gave for some graduating high school students at some mentoring event was damn great, and hilarious! - i'll give only the partial highlights...

To set the scene, he's the last speaker to come on, until then it was typical wisdom from 'older' wisemen. Before Thom spoke, other speakers were formal and blah, blah, ho, ha, blah, blah.... there were many kids wanting to go in the construction, design and engineering industry. Families were there in full force, with younger kids/siblings in the 1 to 16 age range etc., some babies running loose around the assembly area ...

Suddenly TM walks on stage and has the projector ready, first image pops up on a 12 foot high screen - it's a full size image of a woman, wearing a fabric cloth, basically an imprint of her - fully naked! (You suddenly hear 'oooh' and 'ahhh' from parents in the crowd - that was great!).

Then he starts off something like this, "It's funny, i never done one of these before ...ok, Well, i remember when i was in your shoes - frankly i wasn't good at anything, school sucks! I had no idea what the hell i was gonna do. I didn't care about anything. I think skipping classes was great, and i'd do it all over again..." (more 'oooh' and 'ahhh' from parents in the crowd).

(then it got all serious...)

"Anyhow, ... one day, i found architecture... i was fascinated and interested in something for the first time. You know what I'm talking about?! Right? Kind of like when a baby takes a shit, and you see them looking like woah! - they're basically fascinated by something they created! They can touch it, squeeze it...."

(The biggest 'oooh' and 'ahhh' from parents in the crowd followed!)

... Anyhow, it went on. The rest of the time got pretty serious, the slides got crazier, but ... then, no one knew what the hell they were looking at!! - It was great! I wish I had taken photos of people's expressions in the crowd the entire time...

I went to CaBoom yesterday. I arrived at 11, expecting there to be a lot to see. I was finished looking around by about 11:27. There was not a lot there - nothing you couldn't have seen by driving around LA and visiting a few stores. The pre-fab house outside was set up badly and was very crooked. The smaller one from Built was tended by two women who were more interested in doing yoga than talking about the structure they were in. It seemed absurd to be charged almost $30 for this. I did go on a house tour (another $35) which was amazing, and saved the day for me. Went to the homes of Ehrlich, Radziner and O'Herlihy -- Ehrlich's was definitely the highlight. He was there, answered questions and was very welcoming. Overall, I thing CaBoom was pretty crappy. I'd have gone on more tours, but the $35/tour price was prohibitive. The whole thing seemed fairly disorganized. The check-in/ticket buying was a mess, and our docent on the tour was useless. The whole event struck me as lacking in professionalism. I am hopeful that they will do this again, however - I think it's a great idea and even though I was disappointed, I am glad I supported their first effort.

Thirty five bucks a tour ticket! Man that is steep… too steep. My wife and I were half joking last month that if we could swing airline tickets it would be a great vacation trip - southern California and progressive architecture. I think even if I could have come up with airfare the tour ticket price would have left me looking at Providence neo-classical and not SoCal modern…

thom mayne is the man!

oh yeah- and CA Boom was more like CA Plop. Only those sod chairs were halfway interesting.

eh- maybe next year.

Well, we just got back to Texas from CA Boom. We purchased 3 day passes ahead of time, not knowing what to expect. We actually missed the best part of the convention (moss+mayne) on Friday. That was a huge disappointment; however the architect’s home tour Saturday morning was excellent. We saw pretty much everything we needed to see in an hour or so at the event. I enjoyed talking to the readymade mag reps and the sod couches were really cool. The yoga girls in the BUILT house were really cool to talk with, even though they didn't know anything about the house. The DJ's were great. Overall CA Boom was a good start, but hopefully will get better.

The rest of our LA trip was great. The highlights of the trip were defiantly Culver City (EOM), the new transportation building, SCI-Arc, the Disney concert hall, and the Getty.

im w mad carrot_ i gotthere @ 11 am sun + was out by 11:15 .. waste of $ xcept x-ophe was quite good DJ .. maybe the parties were cool /? but couldnt make those. i liked the free magazine they gave out ( *i thought it was free ) .. i thought those yoga girls were utterly freaky !!

i'm glad i didn't have to pay for it. $30 is too much to see 15 minutes worth of stuff that was wannabe cappellini merch.

ca boom was more like ca stupid.