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A unique piece of architectural history is headed to America following the purchase of a remaining Nakagin Capsule Tower pod by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The LA Times’ Carolina A. Miranda was first to report on the museum’s acquisition last week, which she said will join... View full entry
Formally known as the Sunset Spectacular, it consists of a trio of massive steel panels that converge at a height of 67 feet, two of their surfaces draped in irregularly shaped digital screens bearing ads for tech overlords Amazon and Meta. If a game designer for “Halo” were to imagine a billboard, this is probably what it would look like. [...]
There is an important story embedded in the design of the Sunset Spectacular. It has nothing to do with its forms.
— Los Angeles Times
Responding to the New York Times’ recent “puff piece” on embattled SCI-Arc professor Tom Wiscombe’s long-awaited Sunset Spectacular billboard in West Hollywood, critic Carolina A. Miranda offered a rather cutting take on Joseph Giovannini‘s “extra curious” failure to mention what has... View full entry
In an amazing rebuke of their university’s purblind pursuit of the Munger Hall megadormitory project last week, students at the University of California, Santa Barbara staged a public forum in order to showcase research-based alternatives to the development and long-term strategic plan. Led by... View full entry
Who gets to be remembered in a city, and why? That will be one of the questions on the dais when artist Catherine Opie joins current and former LA Times architecture critics Christopher Hawthorne and Carolina A. Miranda for a conversation on the topic at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles... View full entry
Rogers never designed any buildings in California. (The closest he came was the competition for the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco, where his firm’s concept ultimately lost out to a proposal by César Pelli.) But California remained an influence and Los Angeles remained top of mind — though frequently as an example of what not to do. — The Los Angeles Times
The colorful architect, who passed away last week at the age of 88, looked to the city’s expansive stock of mid-century modern showcase pieces to inform his own designs, including the Wimbledon House and later in his attempts at urban planning, referencing the city’s notorious sprawl... View full entry
Leading modernist Bernard Judge passed away in his Los Angeles home last week at the age of 90. The LA Times’ Carolina Miranda has an excellent write-up on the man who once designed a home for Marlon Brando on an atoll in French Polynesia. Judge was in many ways the living definition of a... View full entry
Situated on the French Riviera, about a 30-minute drive east of Nice, the graceful 1929 villa was originally designed by architect Eileen Gray as a retreat for her and her lover, critic Jean Badovici. Over the course of its nearly century-long life, it has borne witness to one naked starchitect vandal, one world war, various drug-fueled orgies and a murder. — The Los Angeles Times
The original 1929 villa reopened in August after a five-year-long restoration effort led by the French Association Cap Moderne. The house was the site of a 1996 murder in addition to several other sordid affairs and outré episodes that have helped create a rather useful mythology surrounding... View full entry
According to the museum’s most recent 990 tax forms, filed in 2018, LACMA is carrying $331 million in county bond debt that was used to pay for construction of the Resnick Pavilion, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, the Pritzker Parking Garage and other projects. In addition to that debt, the museum has $112 million in other liabilities, such as accounts payable and accrued expenses. This brings LACMA’s total debt to almost $443 million. — The Los Angeles Times
Carolina Miranda of The Los Angeles Times takes a hard look at the finances for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as the institution prepares for the imminent demolition of its legacy William L. Pereira Associates- and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer-designed campus to make way for a $... View full entry
On Tuesday night, the Marciano Art Foundation laid off nearly six dozen visitor services employees who had been attempting to unionize. The museum then issued a public statement saying that the space would be “closed to the public until further notice.” By Wednesday, the museum had issued yet another statement: There are “no present plans to reopen.”
Staffers who had announced their intent to unionize decried the shutdown as an illegal union-busting scheme.
— The Los Angeles Times
The Marciano Art Foundation debuted in 2017 and was designed by wHY within a building originally designed by storied Los Angeles architect Millard Sheets. Describing the abrupt closure, Carolina Miranda writes in The Los Angeles Times, "The Marciano situation has also highlighted... View full entry
“We have this museum district,” says architect and theorist Dana Cuff, who oversees cityLAB, an urban research and design center at UCLA, “but the stuff that holds everything together is the part we call the city, and that is the part that Los Angeles has never gotten right.” — The Los Angeles Times
Carolina Miranda of The Los Angeles Times reports that despite a number of new and forthcoming institutional expansions coming to the Miracle Mile museum district in Los Angeles, the area's urban design is sorely lacking. The problem, according to Miranda, is worse by the fact that... View full entry
Some of his benches have become part of the fabric of the city — sat on and rained on, captured on Google Street View and even vandalized. Scrawled in tidy handwriting on one bench was, “i love it, thank you,” punctuated by a small heart.
His greatest frustration is that whoever is removing them is leaving bus riders with no place to sit. The benches and their removal get at one of the more byzantine corners of transit bureaucracy in Los Angeles.
— Los Angeles Times
Realizing he had no place to rest at the bus stop near his Eastside home while recovering from a knee injury, this anonymous Los Angeles artist took matters into his own hands and began installing benches at neglected bus stops around the area, Carolina Miranda writes. Unsurprisingly, some of his... View full entry
