Mimi Zeiger

Critic, editor, curator and instigator.

A couple months ago a friend, and storyteller, who lives in an apartment overlooking the Silver Lake Reservoir gazed out his window and then quipped on social media: “It’s like the DMZ.” As joggers ran circles around the lake, backhoes performed a mysterious choreography in the dry lake. The fence that separates pedestrians from what used to be drinking water never looked so ominous.

The empty basin triggers fears as some homeowners worry about how it might impact property values and other neighbors simply miss the view. And for everyone who enjoys walking or driving around the reservoir complex, one big question arises: When will it be refilled? Read More …

Almost every Angelino has a dingbat story. It might be a tale of love and loss in a sixties-era apartment complex or a joke about a friend who lived in stucco box in West L.A. with “stoner” scrawled across the façade in fancy script. Dignbats are such a common multifamily building type that we almost forget about them, even though they crop up everywhere across the Los Angeles basin. They are neighborhood infill noted by such keen observers of the built environment as Ed Ruscha and architecture historian Reyner Banham but rarely celebrated. Read More …

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 …

History was written on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Or at least a little piece of it, as a group of volunteer Wikipedia editors gathered in MOCA’s outdoor plaza for Unforgetting L.A., an edit-a-thon sponsored by online art magazine East of Borneo. The third in a series, the event’s goal was to build Wikipedia articles for artists, curators, and galleries of the past 30 years — the three art-rich decades since MOCA’s inception. Read More …

Architecture, especially at its most conceptual, is murky territory. It takes a risk for the public to wade in. The field is routinely blasted for using alienating jargon or offering up sci-fi designs that produce head scratching. Three exhibitions on view right now across the southland celebrate experimental design, while making it accessible to a broad audience. Each show — Almost Anything Goes: Architecture and Inclusivity at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB); Materials & Applications: Building Something (Beyond) Beautiful, Projects 2002 – 2013 at Cal State Long Beach University Art Museum; and Blindspot Initiative at the Keystone Gallery in Los Angeles–provoke a collaborative dialog about architecture and its allied disciplines: art, design, fabrication, and digital technologies. While the installations run the gamut from the scrappy to the institutional, when taken together these shows reveal a rich and diverse community united by an ethos to question both the academic and professional boundaries that surround architecture. Read More …

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 …

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 …

Architect Peter Zellner stands in the entry foyer of the house his firm ZELLNERPLUS has just finished in Tijuana. Named Casa Anaya, the house is perched on the edge of a hill, and the windows offer a panorama of the border city below, Otay Mesa in the near distance, and the mountain ranges in southeastern Santa Diego County beyond. But Zellner has his back to the view. His phone is out, and he’s filming a tiny waterspout that keeps forming spontaneously in the fountain between the two wings of the building. Over and over the funnel-shaped vortex develops and, like magic, dances for a second as the wind blows off the cul-de-sac, then disappears. Read More …

Ever since the Getty’s initiative Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. kicked off in April and continued all spring and summer with nearly a dozen exhibitions and dozens more programs and events across Los Angeles institutions, there’s been a conversational buzz. At openings, on panel discussions, and in reviews those murmurs have been less about celebrating any particularly iconic buildings in the city and more about the dialogues, blurred boundaries, and differences between art and architecture. Read More …

It’s a sunny spring morning in Venice, CA. At 10 a.m. there’s no lingering marine cover, and the sky is such a bright blue it makes you blush to think of gray climes just emerging from winter. Cars fill the Westminster Avenue Elementary School parking lot, and visitors arriving for a Los Angeles Conservancy walking tour pile out, ready to hit the asphalt in sensible shoes. The self-guided tour is entitled Venice Eclectic: Modern Architecture from the ’70s and ’80s and part of “Curating the City Modern Architecture in L.A.,” the Conservancy’s ongoing contribution to Pacific Standard Time: Modern Architecture in Los Angeles. Read More …