This past fall, Skirball Cultural Center opened the “Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie,” a sweeping exhibition that delves deep into the work and nearly fifty-year-long career of the Israeli/Canadian architect. Models, drawings, photographs, and films illustrate a body of work that spans from North America to the Middle East and Asia. The title underscores not only the geographical breadth of Safdie’s work, but his commitment to making architecture as a social, cultural, and, even, political act. Read More …
When did the war between technology and urbanism now battling on the streets of San Francisco begin? On December 10, protesters blocked a private bus from commuting from the city’s Mission District to Google headquarters in Mountain View, 34 miles away. Over the summer, emotions ran high when tech entrepreneur Peter Shih posted his screed 10 Things I Hate About You: San Francisco Edition. Read More …
To cap off 2013, ARCHITECT asked a few critics and contributors to list their favorite architecture and design books of 2013. This informal panel picked books that even devoted design readers may have overlooked, plus some titles that no one can afford to miss. Here are seven titles they named as their favorites of the year (and one editor’s pick for good measure). Read More …
To tie in with our Next Generation issue, we are taking a look at three emerging practices and their accomplished first builds, from Copenhagen-based Kato x Victoria’s school playground – designed to capture the ’emotional drama’ of teenagers – to vPPR’s triangle houses in London and Murmur’s ‘inside out’ house in Malibu.Here, we catch up with Murmur…
Heather Roberge established LA practice Murmur in 2008. Her research ‘investigates the influence of digital design and fabrication on architecture. It asks, how do we produce architectural surfaces with the technology we have now?’ Her first residential build, Vortex House in Malibu, was designed to capture the site’s views. Read More …
The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design presents:
Corrections & Collections: Architectures for Art and Crime
A Book Talk and Signing
December 5, 7 p.m. Read More …
Different Kinds of Water Pouring Into a Swimming Pool, on view now at REDCAT through November 24, is the first solo project by Madrid-based architect Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation in Los Angeles. Jaque, who is currently a professor at GSAPP Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in New York, sidesteps conventional notions of architecture, preferring to make work that stirs up questions around community, consumption, and political engagement. His work, IKEA Disobedients, which was performed at MoMA PS1 in New York was recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA) as the first “architectural performance piece” in its collection. Read More …
The Solar Decathlon took place in early October in spite of the government shutdown that furloughed all but the most essential employees at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which organizes the biennial competition. Fortunately, the decathlon was funded during the previous fiscal year and is also supported by private donors. But there was another reason the fiscal battle in Congress barely cast a shadow over the proceedings: For the first time since its founding in 2002, the decathlon wasn’t held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., but rather at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, Calif. Read More …
Across our diverse fields we are tackling the question of how to better engage the bottom-up-open-source-distributed-tactical-informal-crowd phenomena surrounding us, whether in the service sector, the city, or the networked community. Read More …
The U.S. pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale featured American designers and artists deploying improvisational and even guerrilla tactics to make cities more sustainable, accessible, and inclusive. Hear from three of those artists whose works used heritage to create new opportunities and amenities for the public. From symbolic to practical, physical to virtual, whimsical to serious, these projects explore the interplay between unsanctioned and official, and suggest fresh tactics for engaging the public and revitalizing communities.
Mimi Zeiger, architecture journalist and critic
Richard Saxton and Stuart Hyatt, Campito, The M12 Collective
Graham Coreil-Allen, New Public Sites
Shaun Slifer, The Howling Mob Society
How many women? That’s the question I routinely ask when faced with a lineup of panelists, a competition jury, an exhibition checklist, or a table of contents. Then I will count, picking out female names and remembering which offices are partnerships.
I’m not alone in my inventory. For (en)Gendered (in)Equity: The Gallery Poster Project, Micol Hebron asked fellow artists to contribute posters depicting the numbers of male and female artists represented by top galleries in Los Angeles. Read More …