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Los Angeles’ rollercoaster campaign to host the Olympics — an effort marked by early defeat and last-second negotiations — reached its conclusion Wednesday when the city was formally awarded the 2028 Summer Games. International Olympic Committee members, by a unanimous show of hands, voted their approval at a session in Lima, Peru, ending an unusual bid competition that resulted in two winners as Paris was simultaneously given the 2024 Games. — Los Angeles Times
Paris and Los Angeles were officially awarded the 2024 and 2028 summer games, respectively. Both cities have previously hosted the summer olympics twice, Paris in 1900 and in 1924, and Los Angeles in 1932 and in 1984. The two cities already have some of the necessary infrastructures to host the... View full entry
Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Fall 2017 Ready or not, it's the start of a new school year. Back for Fall 2017 is Archinect's Get Lectured, an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back regularly to... View full entry
In other ways — in almost every other way — Wong’s career was a study in complexity. Political and ethnic complexity, mostly. And the complicated question of credit in architecture: Who gets it, who doesn’t and who has the authority to hand it out. [...] If not for the persistence of that narrative, Gin Wong’s contribution to postwar L.A. would be far better understood. It’s that simple. — Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times
In a recent column, Christopher Hawthorne highlights the quiet legacy of architect Gin Wong, who passed away September 1 at the age of 94. Wong worked as director of design for William Pereira in the 1960s before opening his own firm in 1973. Some of his projects include LAX's original design in... View full entry
L.A.’s forbidden city consists of the many buildings that we inhabit, use and care about but that are illegal to build today. Some of Los Angeles’ most iconic building types, from the bungalow courts and dingbats common in our residential neighborhoods to Broadway’s ornate theaters and office buildings, share this strange fate of being appreciated, but for all practical purposes, banned. — urbanize.la
In this article, Mark Vallianatos describes how most of Los Angeles' buildings, much like New York, would be illegal to build today. He draws a detailed and fascinating history of the evolution of Los Angeles building and zoning codes and how those changes impacted both the shape of the built... View full entry
The unexpected closure of Angels Flight on Monday, four days after the funicular’s grand reopening, seemed a fitting twist for a railway that has operated in fits and starts for half a century. Since its reopening, 21 years ago, Angels Flight has been shut down more than half the time. — Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles's well known car culture quite efficiently dismantled the city's public transportation, passenger railway system, and the now long-gone network of red cars. Yet, one passenger train, and the smallest of all, keeps rising from the ashes — and dying again. Angels Flight, the... View full entry
Richard Neutra’s glass and steel Chuey House in the Hollywood Hills is being marketed as a ‘tear down’ for $10.5m.
The architect designed the midcentury modern home for poet Josephine Ain Chuey in 1956, and it has since passed down to her niece and nephew, who filed for bankruptcy in June. It’s now being sold as a ‘truly unique development opportunity’, with no mention of its architectural merit – just its ‘spectacular’ Sunset Plaza Drive location and ‘unmatched panoramic views..."
— The Spaces
Iconic, elegant, and now endangered: one of the works of the masters of mid-century modern architecture has been listed more for its lot than for the exquisitely cantilevered structure itself. After its completion, Josephine Ain, who was living with her husband Richard Chuey, wrote to Neutra... View full entry
Plans for The Berggruen Institute's new Scholars' Campus in Los Angeles are shaping up. Most recently, the Institute unveiled the project masterplan designed by Herzog & de Meuron, who is working in collaboration with Michel Desvigne Paysagiste and Inessa Hansch Architecte, and executive... View full entry
Southern California boasts the largest concentration of Iranians in the world outside Iran, and the county of Los Angeles houses the vast majority. The Fahrang Foundation—a non-religious, non-political, and not-for-profit foundation with a mission to celebrate and promote Iranian art and... View full entry
The Broad announced today that it will present a new work from Venezuelan-born artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (b. 1923), in collaboration with the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation. Couleur Additive has been commissioned by The Broad as part of the Getty Initiative, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching... View full entry
The county’s board of supervisors gave the green light to The Granny Flats Motion project on Tuesday, which would give homeowners up to $75,000 to build a backyard home—if they agree to rent it to a homeless family or individual. On top of that, the county will also streamline the permitting process, an arguably attractive incentive considering that most of these “accessory dwelling units” in U.S. cities are illegal. — CityLab
Los Angeles is undertaking a new effort to curb its ballooning homeless population—paying homeowners to build a 'granny flat' for a homeless family to inhabit in their backyard. According to CityLab, "The pilot, for which the county has earmarked $550,000, will grant two or three of such units... View full entry
At a ceremony last week to mark the opening of the $700-million USC Village, C.L. Max Nikias, the university’s president, spoke at some length about the architecture of the new complex and what he called “USC’s extraordinary physical metamorphosis” in recent years. [...]
Then came his ringing conclusion: “And let’s always remember, the looks of the University Village give us 1,000 years of history we don’t have. Thank you, and fight on!”
— latimes.com
"Even delivered in a vacuum it would have been a remarkable statement," Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne remarks. "The president of the leading private university in Los Angeles taking up, as a rhetorical cudgel, one of the laziest clichés about the city, that it has no... View full entry
It’s known as the “urban heat island effect,” and it refers to the pockets of intense heat captured by the concrete, asphalt, dark roofs and the dearth of foliage that define many American cityscapes.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti wants to reduce the city’s average temperature by 3 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 20 years.
— Washington Post
Los Angeles is the first U.S. city to test cool pavement to fight urban heat, coating streets in a special gray paint known as CoolSeal, that can lower the temperature as much as 10 degrees. The officials say that the hope is that cooler streets will lead to cooler neighborhoods, less air... View full entry
Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Fall 2017 Ready or not, the start of the school year is coming up. Back for Fall 2017 is Archinect's Get Lectured, an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back... View full entry
The Frank Gehry-designed project has taken a smaller, but important step forward this summer, by filing for building permits with the City of Los Angeles...The latest iteration of the Grand Avenue Project, which has been proposed for well over a decade, calls for the construction of two high-rise buildings at 100 S. Grand Avenue, replacing an infamous "tinker-toy" parking structure...Related has set a 2018 groundbreaking date for the project, with completion targeted in 2022. — urbanize.la
L.A. now boasts the tallest building west of Chicago—the Wilshire Grand Center in the Downtown district. “If you watch the opening sequence of Blade Runner from 1982 and look at how it imagines L.A.’s skyline in 2019, you can’t help sense life emulating art"
Meanwhile, the creators of the sumptuous new Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills traveled back in time for inspiration...“We studied everything from the decor of the movie sets to the style of leading Hollywood actresses”
— Architectural Digest
Back in the day, Hollywood movies used to draw their inspiration from the city of Angels as many of LA's most iconic buildings played starring roles in Tinseltown. Today, the tables have turned and the cities architecture has begun taking a note or two from Hollywood. Proving that the expression... View full entry
