Mimi Zeiger

Critic, editor, curator and instigator.

El ciclo de Interludios de tres propone transformar el tradicional formato de conferencia en el que un ponente se enfrenta al público, en una estructura de conversación no jerárquica en la que al menos tres participantes están involucrados y se retroalimentan en tiempo real. Se pretende a su vez, explorar distintas disposiciones espaciales y programáticas que motiven dinámicas de discusión alternativas.

En ese sentido, LIGA quiere propiciar un formato inédito para cada edición con el objetivo de ampliar el espectro de posibilidades e involucrar a todos los presentes.

El pasado martes 23 de agosto tuvo lugar en LIGA el segundo evento del ciclo Interludios de tres con los invitados Mimi Zeiger, Ana Paula Galindo y Alejandro Hernández. Este ciclo propone transformar el tradicional formato de conferencia en el que un ponente se enfrenta al público, en una estructura de conversación no jerárquica en la que al menos tres participantes están involucrados y se retroalimentan en tiempo real. Se pretende a su vez, explorar distintas disposiciones espaciales y programáticas que motiven dinámicas de discusión alternativas. En ese sentido, LIGA quiere propiciar un formato inédito para cada edición con el objetivo de ampliar el espectro de posibilidades e involucrar a todos los presentes.

Para el segundo evento de la serie se ensayó una estructura experimental de conversación, según la cual los tres invitados participaron de un partido de ping-pong virtual. La dinámica consistió en lanzar imágenes que fueron comentadas por los otros jugadores. Fueron objeto de esta investigación en tiempo real la cultura visual contemporánea, la velocidad, el tipo de filtros y nivel de reflexión con que absorbemos y reaccionamos a los estímulos que nos llegan codificados en forma de imágenes.

As rents increase and household income stagnates, more people are turning to micro-living as an alternative to pricier options. On Tuesday, June 28, at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown L.A., KPCC reporter Josie Huang met with a panel of experts to discuss the viability of micro-units as a response to L.A.’s affordable housing crisis. Panelists discussed the recent trend in the development of micro-units – typically apartments that are 400 square feet or smaller. Topics covered included the affordability and sustainability of the units, their impact on the racial and socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods, and the cultural and economic trends whose pressures they reflect. Read More …

The Association for Women in Architecture was founded almost 100 years ago for the purpose of advancing and supporting women in their careers in an exceedingly male dominated industry. Clearly, a lot has changed since our organization was formed. But even today, statistics continue to show that a deficit exists between male and female career advancement, pay and leadership within the field of Architecture and its allied industries.

Join our distinguished panel of architects, designers, educators, journalists and activists for a discussion on gender–how it affects our lives and how the work we do can transcend. Topics will range from the practical to the philosophical and intangible. Opportunities, pay and promotions, creativity, goals, status, visibility — all are questioned in the symposium on DOES GENDER MATTER?

Featuring a panel conversation with:
Mimi Zeiger
Gere Kavanaugh
Leigh Christy
Laurel Broughton
Annie Chu
Rebecca Rudolph
Jessica Fleischmann

Join us in discussing alternative models of urbanism and how public realm investments can support culture and build community. The recently completed ‘Hollywood Pop!’ will serve as as a starting point for our discussion. A yearlong park installation funded by the Sunset & Vine Business Improvement District, the project was designed and built by LA-Más to explore divergent approaches to providing public amenities in the private realm.

Our diverse panel represents a wide range of voices – urban advocates, bureaucrats, designers, critics, and Hollywood business stakeholders. Our discussion will focus on the potential of public-private partnerships and small scale investments that can not only blur traditional urban boundaries, but also provide a model for investment and impact at the neighborhood scale.

This discussion features Nat Gale (Los Angeles Department of Transportation), Elizabeth Timme (LA-Más), Daveed Kapoor (utopiad.org), Mimi Zeiger (critic), Matthew Severson (Hollywood Property Owners Alliance), with facilitation by Helen Leung (LA-Más).

What is disruption, anyway? The term has been cast as a tech market tactic, a cultural trope, and a belief system of near-theological proportions. In an evening of performances and provocations, we considered many definitions of this watchword. Presenters offered perspectives of radical change ranging from activism and technology to equity and design:

Participants: It’s Showtime NYC subway dancers; Kimberly Drew, @museummammy and associate online community producer, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Riley Hooker, editor, Façadomy; E. Tammy Kim, editorial staffer, The New Yorker, Jonathan Lee, design manager/lead, Google Design; Oscar Nuñez, program coordinator, Center for Urban Pedagogy; members of Picture the Homeless; Steven Thrasher, U.S. writer-at-large, The Guardian; and critic, editor, and curator Mimi Zeiger

Salon Participant

HACLab Pittsburgh: Imagining the Modern

The city of Pittsburgh encountered modern architecture through an ambitious program of urban revitalization in the 1950s and ’60s. HACLab Pittsburgh: Imagining the Modern untangles Pittsburgh’s complicated relationship with modern architecture and urban planning.

In this experimental presentation at Carnegie Museum of Art’s Heinz Architectural Center, architects-in-residence over,under highlight successive histories of pioneering architectural successes, disrupted neighborhoods, and the utopian aspirations and ideals of public officials and business leaders. These intertwined narratives shape the exhibition’s presentation, which includes abundant archival materials from the period, an active architecture studio, and a salon-style discussion space, all unearthing layers of history and a range of perspectives.

Through these stories, HACLab Pittsburgh demonstrates the city’s national influence in the development of the modern American city, and focus on several neighborhoods and sites, including Gateway Center, the Lower Hill, Allegheny Center, and Oakland. Read More …

In an era of star architects and rapidly consumed online media, what is the contemporary role of architectural criticism and the design critic? How does a critic negotiate the sometimes obscure territory of discipline-specific issues or vocabularies and bring larger awareness of design to the public and, conversely, how do contemporary social issues impact the profession?

To celebrate the closing of the exhibition “Shelter” at the Architecture + Design Museum, on curators Sam Lubell and Danielle Rago hosted two panel discussions with the featured architects, focusing on the sites that serve as the exhibition’s organizing principles: the Metro subway extension in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the stretch of the LA River running through the city proper. Both sites embody much of what is affecting Los Angeles’ changing urbanism – ongoing drought, invigorated public transportation, gentrification, and increasing density.

Mimi Zeiger, West Coast Editor of The Architect’s Newspaper moderated the panel on the River, with Jimenez Lai (Bureau Spectacular), Elizabeth Timme (LA-Más), and Lorcan O’Herlihy (Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects), and Amelia Taylor-Hochberg moderated the panel on Metro, with Jennifer Marmon (PAR), Bob Dornberger (wHY), and Priscilla Fraser (senior architect at LACMA).

Archinect Sessions, featuring a live recording of the closing panel discussion.

The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion (Actar, 2015) is a forthcoming encyclopedia of tools—or what we call “weapons”—used by architects, planners, policy-makers, developers, real estate brokers, ac/vists, and other urban actors in the United States use to restrict or increase access to urban space. The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion inventories these weapons, examines how they have been used, and speculates about how they might be deployed (or re/red) to make more open ci/es in which more people feel welcome in more spaces, be they “exclusive” communi/es with good schools, good jobs, and stable property values, or the everyday public spaces—the parks, sidewalks, and street corners— within those communi/es.

In this session, we will look examine a handful of weapons of exclusion opera/ng in contemporary Los Angeles, from superfluous curb cuts that prevent people from parking near the beach, to fake “parks” built to evict sex offenders from their homes (California law prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of parks or schools), to communicate care facili/es ordinances that outlaw sober-living facili/es homes by outlawing mul/ple lease agreements, to gerrymandering schemes that poli/cally neutralize communi/es and their interests.

Access Wars
Daniel D’Oca, Interboro Partners, Brooklyn, NY

Community Designing Change: Active Methods of Community Engagement to Reshape a More Equitable Built Environment
Theresa Hwang, Woodbury University

Trailblazing Public Space
Therese Kelly, Therese Kelly Design / Los Angeles Urban Rangers

Aesthetics and the People
Mimi Zeiger, Architects Newspaper and Los Angles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design

Tourism for the 99%
Laura Pulido, University of Southern California

“The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind.” ― Renata AdlerSpeedboat

In June 2015 we read Renata Adler’s Speedboat, the cult favorite turned undisputed classic that reflects on what it means to be an urban American. Set in 1970s New York, Speedboat provides glimpses into the city of the past. The conversation was led by Garnette Cadogan and Mimi Zeiger.