Happy New Year! 

For the month of January, Archinect is shifting its spotlight series to Los Angeles, the country’s second largest city, and the urban area home to some of the nation’s leading architecture firms, advocacy groups, and educational institutions. Los Angeles is, of course, known the world over for its sunshine and auto-centric urban planning, but we hope that over the course of the next few weeks, we can help shed a new light on some of the less well-known practices, building approaches, and educational initiatives that are currently taking shape here. 

The L.A. focus follows December’s Spotlight on Austin, a collection of stories that highlighted some of the Lone Star State’s unique contributions to American design and building culture. A few highlights:

• In Focus: Chase Daniel On Oscillating Between Designing and Photographing Buildings
• Austin Architect Michael Hsu On Balancing Roughness With Sophistication
• 10 architectural projects in Austin by Austin architects we liked this month
• A look at Austin's new crop of downtown towers
• Architects open up a mid-century building in Austin through restorative adaptive-reuse
• Austin is calling! Don't miss these architectural job opportunities currently featured on Archinect Jobs
• Neil Denari On Balancing Practice, Teaching, and Experimental Design

This month, as we head to Southern California, look out for profiles of some of the leading educators and practitioners based in the region, including Cal Poly LA Metro Director Stephen Phillips in our Deans List series, as well as features covering recent work by Kilograph’s Keely Colcleugh, the advocacy efforts of the SaveLACMA group, and also in-depth coverage of some of the region’s major projects, under-covered firms, and top architecture students, just to name a few of the stories we have planned so far. 

Of course, Archinect covers Los Angeles regularly; A few of our recent L.A. highlights include:

• Eric Owen Moss-designed (W)RAPPER: tower construction goes vertical
• Weiss/Manfredi to lead La Brea Tar Pits overhaul in Los Angeles
• Jerde asked to improve the Rose Bowl
• Step into a translucent replica of artist Do Ho Suh's NYC home at LACMA, starting next month
• Olympic Tower, a flashy new Downtown LA skyscraper, hopes to leave its mark on the city's skyline

Make sure to keep an eye out for our Spotlight on Los Angeles tag to stay up to date on our coverage of the city and everything that’s going on there.