Preservationist John Linnert, a Costa Mesa architect, noticed crews working on the upstairs interior in January and reported them to the city planning staff. He has kept a close watch on the building in recent years. — latimes.com

Modernist architect Eugene Weston III was in his early 30s when he declared that "the house is the last of the handcrafted objects" in an industrial age...

The architect built a number of homes in and around Pasadena but only one in Eagle Rock, in 1953, for Norman Bilderback, then a director of design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. — latimes.com

What’s the best place to build a wetland? How about at the site of an old MTA bus lot in South Los Angeles? It took more than $26 million and nearly three years to complete the transformation from parking lot to urban wetland. Open to the public as of February 9, the new South Los Angeles Wetland Park that doesn’t only efficiently process storm water runoff–it also provides crucial community green space. — blog.archpaper.com

Norma Merrick Sklarek, the first African American woman in the country to become a licensed architect, who helped produce Terminal 1 at Los Angeles International Airport and the American Embassy in Tokyo, died Monday at her home in Pacific Palisades. She was 85. — latimes.com

If you're in Los Angeles this month, don't miss to check out the exhibition Go Figure by LA-based architect Ramiro Diaz-Granados/Amorphis that is currently on view at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Diaz-Granados will discuss the installation with SCI-Arc director Eric Owen Moss on Friday, February 10, at 7pm. — bustler.net

The L.A. landscape would look much different without four Chinese-Americans — Eugene Choy, Gilbert Leong, Helen Liu Fong and Gin Wong — whose work has shaped some of the city's architectural landmarks. A new exhibit at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles examines their contributions. — vcstar.com

Artist Mike Kelley has passed away at his home in Los Angeles, having apparently taken his own life. The tragic news was confirmed to BLOUIN ARTINFO by Helene Winer, of New York's Metro Pictures gallery, a long-time associate of the artist. — artinfo.com

Ruth Price, president and artistic director of the Jazz Bakery since it debuted in 1992, said Tuesday that she didn’t know Gehry, or even ask for his help, before he called about six months ago to volunteer his services.

“He said, 'I’m doing this for two people: Sydney Pollack, and my wife, Berta.’ ” Film director Pollack, a close friend of the architect, died in 2008..." — latimesblogs.latimes.com

“I never thought of this as a ‘house,'” Storey said. “It was designed to be a ‘container' of daily life. It made me realize there is work and there is life, but more often these are inseparable.” — latimesblogs.latimes.com

Yu is a soft-spoken engineer with great power: He sets the timing for all of L.A.’s stoplights. His department has to take it all in: bikes, trains, big events and, of course, lots and lots of cars. Los Angeles has one of the nation’s worst reputations for automobile congestion, but that’s a simplistic way of looking at things. Its freeways are still the most congested in the nation, but L.A. has 36 times as many miles of surface streets as it does freeways. — forbes.com

The co-founder of Pinkberry frozen yogurt attacked a homeless man with a tire iron after the panhandler flashed a sexually provocative tattoo in his direction, Los Angeles police said Tuesday.

Lee and the other man chased and beat the homeless man, according to witnesses. The homeless man required hospitalization with a broken left forearm and cuts on his head. — nydailynews.com

Why is it that cities from New York to Shanghai, Dubai to London and Kuala Lumpur to Atlanta can throw up iconic skyscrapers like so many murals, while L.A.'s boxy tops look more like the Appalachians after strip-mining?

The answer? Blame well-meaning text inserted in 1974 into the Los Angeles Municipal Code. — kcet.org

In response to the demolition of several famous buildings, the City Council approves rules for tearing down or altering structures older than 45 years and designed by important architects. It also establishes a Cultural Heritage Commission. — latimes.com

Esther McCoy is having a moment. The architecture critic and historian, who died in 1989 at age 85, is the subject of a smart Pacific Standard Time exhibition at the Schindler House in West Hollywood, building on McCoy's deep connections with Rudolph Schindler himself. The show is accompanied by a Getty-funded catalog, and early next year East of Borneo Press will publish "Piecing Together Los Angeles," an anthology of McCoy's essays on architecture. — Christopher Hawthorne, latimes.com