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Late last week, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles revealed one rendering so far of the new Audrey Irmas Pavilion by OMA New York, who won the design competition for the building back in 2015. As an addition to the Temple's Erika J. Glazer Family Campus, the Pavilion is OMA's first... View full entry
The cost of Stan Kroenke's stadium in Inglewood is climbing [...].
Owners approved raising the debt waiver to $4.963 billion for the first phase of the project, which includes the football stadium where the Rams and Chargers will play, the neighboring 6,000-seat performance venue, the 200,000 square feet of office space for NFL Media, the parking lots surrounding the stadium, and the cost of the entire 300-acre parcel.
— Los Angeles Times
The price tag for the stadium itself was originally estimated at $2.6 billion but is now closer to $3 billion — eye-wateringly higher than the most expensive NFL venues to date: MetLife Stadium, the shared home of the New York Giants and Jets, and the Atlanta Falcons' Mercedes-Benz Stadium... View full entry
Materials & Applications—the part gallery, part research space, and part pocket park, that has been a cultural center for the Los Angeles architecture community since 2003—will be moving out of its Silver Lake home. "Our mission is to bring creative experimentation into public space and... View full entry
Two men were hit with 487 counts on Wednesday in a complaint alleging they spent years running a scam that has potentially left hundreds of homeowners across Southern California with homes that may not be structurally sound. [...]
Huntington Beach resident Ruben Gutierrez, 43, and 46-year-old Wilfrido Rodriguez of Downey each face numerous counts of forgery, identity theft and grand theft in a scheme involving falsified documents and fraudulent engineering services [...].
— KTLA
"Rodriguez was an engineering drafter and Gutierrez was an architectural designer at Palos Verdes Engineering. Neither Rodriguez nor Gutierrez were licensed architects or civil engineers," a news release published by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said. "Investigators... View full entry
A wide array of projects big and small are now moving forward alongside all 51 miles of the Los Angeles River, and some of the most comprehensive planning is taking place along the river’s southern portion, from Vernon to Long Beach. — la.curbed.com
As part of the ongoing Los Angeles River Revitalization Plan, Perkins + Will have recently released renderings of what their contribution could look like. The overall Los Angeles River plan includes proposals varying in size and location. The largest proposals include revitalizing expansive... View full entry
The Manhattan skyline is one of the world’s most iconic, but it wouldn’t be complete without the city’s famed residential supertalls. Luxury buildings like 432 Park Ave and One57 have set a high bar in the era of tower living, but the past decade has seen the vertical lifestyle catching on across the globe—from Boston to Monaco to New Orleans. — quartzy.qz.com
Check out these luxury residential skyscrapers outside of NYC: Boston, MA Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, Echelon Seaport is Boston's latest project located in the Seaport District. This new luxury condo and apartment development is currently under construction with a completion date of 2020. ... View full entry
Frank Gehry's impact on the Grand Avenue cultural corridor in Downtown Los Angeles keeps growing: 15 years after completing the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall, and with the enormous The Grand mixed-use development right across the street finally coming to realization, Gehry was today also... View full entry
After several years of planning and proposals in different cities, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, funded by the “Star Wars” filmmaker George Lucas, is breaking ground today on a new building here that its leaders predict will take about four years to complete.
Designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, the museum will occupy a corner of Exposition Park, an urban hub near the University of Southern California that already contains three museums [...].
— The New York Times
Image courtesy of Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.After protective fencing went up last month at its Exposition Park site in South Los Angeles, the $1-billion Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, designed by MAD Architects, finally broke ground today. View full entry
Overlooking the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, the Hollyridge Home completed a well-deserved makeover this past January by L.A.-based AUX Architecture. Originally built in 1989 and previously owned by Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony Kiedis from 1990-1997, the 2,849 square-foot home is... View full entry
After 14 years as the Los Angeles Times' resident architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne is moving on to become chief design officer for the city of Los Angeles. Announced this morning, Hawthorne explained that "beginning next month, [he'll] be working in the mayor's office to raise the... View full entry
The construction of this and other so-called giga-mansions underscores a new gilded age in the United States and especially in LA. [...]
The splurge comes amid a housing shortage that has fuelled a homelessness crisis, with 57,000 people without permanent shelter in LA county [...]. The Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez compared the city’s hilltop mansions to giant tombstones marking the death of humility.
— The Guardian
The Guardian takes a peek into the world of ultra-luxury real estate developer Niles Niami whose latest endeavor—the sprawling Bel Air hilltop giga-mansion with its four swimming pools, 20 bedrooms, movie theater, and nightly club aptly called The One—frequently makes the news for... View full entry
Princeton University School of Architecture announced today that Sylvia Lavin will be joining their faculty effective July 1, 2018. Lavin is currently a Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, where she was Chairperson from 1996 to 2006 and the Director of the... View full entry
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.
— latimes.com
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... View full entry
The Hammer Museum, housing Los Angeles' 3rd largest collection of artistic innovation, has announced a public launch of a $180 million capital campaign in their multiyear expansion plan. A masterplan to improve every facet of the museum has been underway since 2000 lead by Michael Maltzan... View full entry
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
Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne reflects on Southern California's ongoing love-hate relationship with its freeways. View full entry
