Mimi Zeiger

Critic, editor, curator and instigator.

April 11–July 12, 2015

Chatter

Architecture Talks Back

TAGS

Architecture, D-Crit, Design, Digital Culture, Exhibitions, Iker Gil, Karen Kice, Neil Donnelly, School of Visual Art, Urbanism

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Curators: Karen Kice, with Iker Gil

Mimi Zeiger and Neil Donnelly with the School of Visual Arts Summer Design Writing and Research Intensive

Architecture is a perpetual conversation between the present and the past, knowing full well that the future is listening. So what happens when this dialogue is influenced by contemporary modes of communication such as texting, Twitter, and Instagram? Chatter happens: ideas are developed, produced, and presented as open-ended or fragmented conversations and cohere through the aggregation of materials. Chatter: Architecture Talks Back looks at the diverse contemporary methods and approaches wielded by five emerging architects: Bureau Spectacular, Erin Besler, Fake Industries Architectural Agonism, Formlessfinder, and John Szot Studio. Read More …

January 19, 2015

MAS CONTEXT x LOS ANGELES

TAGS

Andrew Clark, Architecture, Bruce Mau Design, David Yoon, Deborah Richmond, Events, Iker Gil, Joshua Stein, Julia Luke

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On Monday, January 19, 2015, MAS Context and five LA-based contributors will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the publication and discuss the work they contributed. The event will be hosted at Bruce Mau Design Los Angeles.

Contributors:
Julia Luke (Creative Director, Julia Luke Design)
Deborah Richmond (Architect, Deborah Richmond Architects)
Joshua G. Stein (Architect, Radical Craft)
David Yoon (Engineer, YoonCo)
Mimi Zeiger (Critic, editor, curator and instigator)

Moderated by Iker Gil (Editor-in-chief, MAS Context) and Andrew Clark (Director, BMD Los Angeles).

January 16, 2015

Photography & Architecture

TAGS

Architecture, Art, Barbara Bestor, Events, Frances Anderton, Gordon Baldwin, Grant Mudford, James Welling

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Barbara Bestor (architect and executive director of the Woodbury University Julius Shulman Institute) moderates a panel on the critical and engaged eye that photographers bring to the built environment. In LA the human experience of space has undergone constant transformation and we will discuss the urban environment and its changing representations.

Moderator: Barbara Bestor: Architect and Executive Director of the Woodbury University Julius Shulman Institute

Panelists:
Frances Anderton: Producer, Writer & Host of DnA, Design & Architecture, KCRW
James Welling: Artist & Professor of Photography, UCLA Department of Art
Mimi Zeiger: Critic, Editor & Writer
Grant Mudford: Photographer
Gordon Baldwin: Independent Curator, Writer & Editor, Former Curator
Department of Photographs, Getty Museum

December 8, 2014

Peter Shire

Public Work, Lines Of Desire

TAGS

Architecture, Design, Peter Shire

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If I were to sum up the stylistic forces at work in the design world over the last year, it wouldn’t be too far off to dub 2014 the year of the postmodern revival. In graphic design, in fashion, and even in architecture we’ve seen a return to the period’s signature formal tropes and a renewed debate over the worthiness of their preservation.

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November 18, 2014

Peter Shire

Teapots, Public Art, and a Life in Design

TAGS

Architecture, Articles, Design, Peter Shire

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On the day I arrive at Peter Shire’s Echo Park studio, a pile of fall fruit perches on a countertop. Bright orange persimmons and crimson pomegranates compete with the full spectrum of riotous color in the artist’s workshop. Racks are filled with multi-hued ceramics, and metal sculptures powder-coated in vivid green, blue, and violet hang from the ceiling. And then there’s Shire himself. He’s dressed in a tangerine t-shirt, a red apron, gray shorts, and lime and purple striped socks.  Read More …

October 16, 2014

OPINION: On Generations

Has history become a trove of artefacts ready for appropriation?

TAGS

Architecture, Articles, Barbara Bestor, Deborah Sussman, Gere Kavanaugh

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“Could life be more beautiful?” wrote Deborah Sussman on 1 November 1954 in a letter home to her parents. A young designer living in the Eames house and working for the office, she would become the environmental designer responsible for the iconic colourful graphics of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and countless bold visions, including the cartoonish lettering used on the billboard for the 1972 documentary Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles.

Sussman passed away in August. Sharply present on the LA scene, even at 83, she had been quietly fighting breast cancer over the last year and news of her death was a sad shock to the design and architecture community. How could someone so vital be gone? Graphic designer April Greiman recalled a story of petite Sussman introducing herself by saying, “I’m kinda a big deal”. Read More …

September 25-November 13, 2014

Host: Natural Histories for Los Angeles

Worldwide Storefront

TAGS

Alexei Tylevich, Andrew Kovacs, Anthony Martin, Architecture, Charlotte Hannson, Erin Besler, Events, Exhibitions, Ian Besler, Jia Gu, Jonathan Crisman, Jose Sanchez, Katya Tylevich, Laurel Consuelo Broughton, Leonardo Bravo, Luis Callejas, Productora, River Jukes-Hudson, Sam Lubell, Sarah Lorenzen, Wonne Ickx, Worldwide Storefront

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Host curators are Mimi Zeiger (Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design), Leonardo Bravo and River Jukes-Hudson (Big City Forum), and Sarah Lorenzen (Neutra VDL Research House).

This fall, curators from three Los Angeles-based organizations come together as part of World Wide Storefront, a Storefront for Art and Architecture project, to present Host: Natural Histories for Los Angeles. This series of exhibitions and events is a collaboration between Big City Forum, Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, and the Neutra VDL Research House.

Host: Natural Histories for Los Angeles explores the multivalent meaning of “host” though spectacle, parasitic opportunism, and domestic landscapes. The Neutra VDL Research House serves as the site of these investigations and the house, embedded with spatial effects—mirrors, screens, and pools of water—heightens and confuses the relationship between the domestic interior and the exterior.  Read More …

July 2014

Refashioning the Narrative

Emerging architecture and design practice by Mimi Zeiger

TAGS

Architecture, Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura, Articles, AT103, Frida Escobedo, Jose Esparza, LIGA, Marielsa Castro, MMX Studio, Pedro&Juana, Productora, Regina Pozo, Urbanism

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Let’s get this bit out of the way: Mexico City is dense, Mexico City is colourful, and Mexico City is a place of contrasts. That is to say, in a haze of pollution you can eat tapas on the roof of a boutique hotel designed by Enrique Norton – or scoff down quesadillas on the street, sheltered by a tarp hung between a fence and a lamp post. The city’s famous outdoor markets sell local crafts and produce alongside imported Chinese sundries. Icons of Mexican modernism are tangled in an urban fabric dating back centuries. For a number of young architects, designers, and curators practicing in its colonias (neighbourhoods), Mexico City is more than clichéd observation; it’s an opportunity to refashion the narrative. Read More …

October 30, 2013

Opinion: Women and Architecture

We need to place ideas, not gender front and centre.

TAGS

Architecture, Articles, Design

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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 …