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Since we first announced that Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was chosen to design the new federal courthouse in Downtown LA, construction for the new cubic courthouse at the corner of First Street and Broadway began on August 8. The approx. 600,000 square-foot building was proposed back in... View full entry
From the air, the hills of Silver Lake, peppered with bungalows, must look like a leafy game of Snakes and Ladders. Roads insinuate their way up and around the mountain slopes and connecting them all from the lowest to the highest are dozens of vertiginous stone staircases. These are the historic Los Angeles Stairs, hidden and unknown to most of the city's residents and visitors. — bbc.co.uk
“An economic downturn is always a good thing for preservation,” says Regina O’Brien, chairperson of the Modern Committee of the Los Angeles Conservancy. “A lot fewer developers are making a lot less money, and therefore they have a lot less motivation to pursue these profit-oriented flips. But the problem is that the opposite is true when the market picks back up.” — thedailybeast.com
"A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living" is the LA-based architect's first major museum retrospective happening now until Sept. 8 at the Hammer Museum. Practicing architecture in Los Angeles from 1939 to his death in 1979, Jones -- or Quincy, as he was known -- is described as a quiet... View full entry
As for what she wants visitors to get out of the exhibit, Koumoundouros just hopes it will help them think about -- even question -- how much our economy is based on the housing market.
'Ownership and consumption are linked to how much our economy is consumed based," she argues. "[This view of housing] is so specifically American. And I love digging that out, and I think questioning it is part of maybe a shift.'
— Marketplace.org
The phrase "a place to call home" rings loud and clear in the "Dream House Resource Center" exhibit by artist Olga Koumoundouros currently at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles until August 18. Her exhibit focuses on the commodification of the home in America through the context of America's... View full entry
Los Angeles is a vast city with countless significant buildings working their way into native architects' psyche often without their acknowledgement. It is not unusual one of those buildings would show up head on, often seen while driving and only to go back to their reclusive place in mind... View full entry
It is, first and foremost, a visual and sound buffer placed between residents and the diesel trucks rumbling along the 103 Freeway to and from the Port of Long Beach.
But the wall, two fences stuffed with mulch generated from Long Beach tree trimmings, is also environmentally friendly; it will eventually be seeded with trees and shrubs that will leech vehicle exhaust from the air and transform the pollution into oxygen.
— presstelegram.com
Tina Hovsepian of global architecture firm Callison was driven by the need to help homeless individuals in Los Angeles when she designed the first prototype for the "Cardborigami" shelter during her fourth year at USC's School of Architecture. Cardborigami, which has grown into a non-profit... View full entry
“Los Angeles doesn’t take architecture seriously,” he says, “though I guess you could say that about most cities.”
“What about Disney Hall?” I ask.
"That’s just one building,” he says with amusement.
There is nothing peevish in his attitude toward this place. He is a fan, waxing a bit protective of our image: “It’s easy from outside to portray us as La-La Land, still easy for Europeans to come here and make jokes about us.”
— Los Angeles magazine
When driving through the streets of Los Angeles, one would expect the urban structures of a dynamic city to be as unique as its inhabitants. But that's not entirely the case, and why is that? The Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles poses that question--and what could have been--with their... View full entry
The houses aren't difficult to spot. They usually follow some variation of the following pattern: gray or greenish-gray paint, white or brick red trim, a colorful door -- mint green, orange, red -- and sometimes a colorful accent mailbox. Instantly recognizable horizontal wood-slat fencing is the final touch. — kcet.org
Now that the exhibition has opened at the museum's Geffen Contemporary branch in Little Tokyo, where it will limp along through the middle of September as part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time Presents series, it's clear that it is the product of an architectural ruling class in Los Angeles that is not so much dysfunctional as increasingly insular. — Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times
Latest L.A. project of Morphosis, Emerson College in progress of construction. I found it retro already. View full entry
This was the first time where a musician, Eno -- who said I'm not a musician, by the way, I really construct ideas in a studio -- I felt connected to the idea of music, let's say, as sort of an intellectual project but at the same time it was still music that you wanted to dance to. So this is the architectural song and Eno as a kind of designer. Totally opened my eyes to new things. — kcrw.com
Track List: Theme From Shaft – Isaac Hayes Kurt’s Rejoinder – Brian Eno 2nd Movement, Symphony No. 5 – Glenn Branca The Bridge – Lee Ranaldo Keep Your Dreams – Suicide (from the First Album) View full entry
"Tip the world on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles," Frank Lloyd Wright reportedly said. That looseness -- a spirit of experimentation, a refusal to be bound by convention -- will be on display June 23 when the MAK Center for Art and Achitecture hosts a tour of groundbreaking modern homes by Frank Gehry, Neil M. Denari Architects, Eric Owen Moss and artist Peter Alexander. — latimes.com
