Mimi Zeiger

Critic, editor, curator and instigator.

May 16, 2026

Pieces of You

TAGS

Architecture, Art, Articles, Cayetano Ferrer, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, Peter Zumthor, William L. Pereira

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Almost six years ago, when most of the world was sheltering at home under Covid restrictions, crews tore down several structures on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus to make way for Swiss architect Peter Zumthor’s soaring David Geffen Galleries. The three demolished structures were part of the original 1965 scheme by LA modernist architect William L. Pereira and included a never-loved 1986 addition by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates. Within weeks, what had been a living, breathing piece of somewhat mediocre architecture was reduced to rubble.

Artist Cayetano Ferrer extracted fragments from the pile with the help of the demolition contractors and a tacit okay from the museum. He then exhibited large chunks—decorative columns that once graced the façade—in a storefront in Pasadena and made plans to present them in a public park in West Hollywood, which never came to fruition. Read More …

April 30, 2026

Not So Bad

LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries, by Peter Zumthor and SOM, offers a seductive art-viewing experience

TAGS

Architecture, Art, Arthur Erickson, Articles, Frank Gehry, MASHstudios, Oscar Niemeyer, Peter Zumthor, Reiko Sudõ, Renzo Piano, SOM, William L. Pereira

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“A critic can always change her mind,” I thought to myself as I hunted for parking off Wilshire Boulevard. At a stoplight, the full flank of Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s David Geffen Galleries filled my windshield. Late afternoon sun cut sideways and glinted warmly off the large glass panes, each framed in brass. Floppy palm trees masked the hefty concrete structure as it arced over the street. Despite the hour, the constellation of fairy lights embedded in the cantilevered roof were on, twinkling. I looked up at Swiss architect Peter Zumthor’s 347,500-square-foot structure, completed in collaboration with SOM, and thought, “Hmm, not so bad.”

Many folks have remarked that the museum’s panoramic facade is cinematic and reference auteur directors. But maybe it’s a rom-com? In a Jane Austen novel, this would be the détournement—the plot twist when the protagonist’s object of derision turns to one of affection, if not desire. The Pritzker Prize–winning architect’s scheme has been my Mr. Darcy since its black flower—a tribute to a tar puddle—was first revealed in 2012. Read More …

April 7, 2026

Overheard on Miracle Mile

Ahead of the opening of LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries in April, Angelenos—and some out-of-towners—share early takes on the new building by Peter Zumthor

TAGS

Architecture, Art, Articles, Peter Zumthor, SOM

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“Last summer, when LACMA opened the doors of the David Geffen Galleries for a tantalizing sneak peek, reactions swiftly cut across party lines: Those who dig the allure of brutal Swissness seemed pleased; others pointed out lime stains and less-than-meticulous concrete detailing. The new building is appealing in the way a dam or highway is appealing. (It’s impossible to know how it’ll look with artwork banged into those massive walls.) With this bridge to nowhere, Zumthor (and SOM) may have produced infrastructural thrall, but is it a museum—a county museum meant to serve all Angelenos? With a vast, sun-blasted plaza and vertiginous climb to the first floor, it’s a dubious welcome.”
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Spring 2026

Avant Guardian

How Galka Scheyer Brought European Modernism to the West Coast

TAGS

Architecture, Art, Articles, Galka Scheyer, Richard Neutra, Rita McBride

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Eight decades after her death, the multi-hyphenate Galka Scheyer is having a moment. She’d be thrilled.

In February, Dear Little Friend: Impressions of Galka Scheyer, an exhibition devoted to the curator, art dealer, and impresario who brought European Modernism to the West Coast, opened at the Norton Simon Museum. And this spring, at her Richard Neutra–designed home on Blue Heights Drive in the Hollywood Hills, Okey Dokey Konrad Fischer and Del Vaz Projects presented Wunderkammer, a site-specific installation by contemporary artist Rita McBride.

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March 28, 2026

Criticism Now: Where next for writing on the city?

TAGS

Architecture, Events

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This panel discussion brings together five of the most prominent architecture critics and writers from across the US to discuss the evolving role and future direction of criticism today. Critics of the built environment have become an endangered species. Countless column inches are devoted to film, TV, music, theatre and books, yet the one discipline that no-one can escape goes woefully under-scrutinised. Ever fewer newspapers and magazines employ architecture critics, while the internet is awash with sponsored content and regurgitated press releases. In an underfunded media landscape, PR companies increasingly control the message, blocking probing eyes from access, and dictating who gets to publish, and for whom. Has criticism lost its way? How can we restore its urgency, engage new audiences, hold power to account, and shine a spotlight on the forces that are shaping the built environment, for better and worse?

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March 25, 2026

A Postmodern Park Confronts Accessibility

San Diego Children's Park boasted a poetic design when it opened in 1995, but its latest iteration attempts to be more inclusive.

TAGS

Architecture, Articles, Design, Martha Schwartz, Miller Hull Partnership, Peter Walker, Schmidt Design Group, Spurlock Landscape Architects

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When San Diego Children’s Park was first conceived in the 1990s by Peter Walker, FASLA, and Martha Schwartz, FASLA, the two took a decidedly postmodern approach to the design. The area was a blank slate for redevelopment, and the designers were charged with creating a big gesture to connect downtown to the convention center, which was poised to host the 1996 Republican National Convention. 

Children’s Park opened in 1995 with a poetic design that paired primary geometries with playful narrative, featuring the palm-ringed Civic Pond, a grid of circular grassy mounds, and a densely planted forest of Canary Island pine trees.

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January 12, 2026

Revisit: Eames House in Pacific Palisades, US by Charles and Ray Eames

Having narrowly escaped the Palisades wildfires, Ray and Charles Eames’ famed Case Study House 8 has reopened with wider access to new areas

TAGS

Architecture, Articles, Charles and Ray Eames

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In late October this year, dozens of neighbours, designers, architects, scholars and arts leaders gathered in a meadow atop a Pacific Palisades bluff. Feet softly crushing the grass and pungent dry eucalyptus leaves, they were there to celebrate the reopening of Ray and Charles Eames’ Case Study House 8 – better known today as the Eames House – to the public. Of all the homes produced for the Case Study House programme, the Eames House may be the most improbable: two metal boxes – a home and studio – on the edge of the Pacific Rim.

A few months earlier, in January 2025, wind whipped urban wildfires that destroyed thousands of Los Angeles structures. Residences just a couple of doors away succumbed to the conflagration, but the Eames House survived unscathed – a near miracle that Eames Demetrios, grandson and director of the Eames Office, ascribes to luck, not design. ‘You can easily imagine a scenario where the wind shifts or is blowing faster,’ he says. ‘It could have ended very differently.’

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November 12, 2025

A Life Less Ordinary

In Encounters Denise Scott Brown asks us to see it her way

TAGS

Architecture, Articles, Denise Scott Brown

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Denise Scott Brown would probably hate it if I read Encounters as biography. As the book’s editor Izzy Kornblatt goes to lengths to explain, this collection of the architect’s photography is meant to offer a series of visual lessons in how to see the world from a perspective inflected by the generous teachings of the likes of sociologist Herbert Gans. Yet given such tantalizing archival materials, nearly 400 photographs taken between the 1950s and 1970s, the urge to parse the details of her life through them holds sway.

Our time loves to conflate image and identity. In recent decades, Scott Brown has been embraced in somewhat contradictory ways as a refractory voice for calling out longstanding bias in the field, as she does in lectures and writings such as “Room at the Top? Sexism and the Star System in Architecture” (1989). She’s also become a mumsy avatar of postmodernism. Encounters enforces neither role.

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November 2025

Lake Verea

Modern Barragán

TAGS

Architecture, Art, Books, Lake Verea, Luis Barragán

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A loving and intense photographic approach

Modern Barragán is a personal book that unfolds and recounts multiple encounters the contemporary Mexican artists Lake Verea have had with Luis Barragán’s oeuvre since 2006. This book unveils photographic depictions of the architect’s work and private spaces as a tribute and a celebration, an anthem of love and admiration. While spending time in his private home, as enthusiastic aficionados enchanted by the elements of his house, the game unfolds. Read More …

Fall/Winter 2025

A Legacy in Clay

The Norton Simon Museum’s newly-restored façade reestablishes Edith Heath’s enduring influence on modern architecture

TAGS

Architecture, Art, Articles, Edith Heath

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In 1971, the American Institute of Architects awarded the prestigious AIA Industrial Arts Medal to self-proclaimed “potter” Edith Heath. It was the first time the organization had bestowed such recognition on a ceramicist. 

Heath, the remarkable founder of the Sausalito-based Heath Ceramics, is probably better known for midcentury homewares. Her earthen tableware captures a casual West Coast modernism in hues drawn from California’s landscape. Her company was founded in 1947, and most design aficionados have a Heath bud vase or generous serving bowl in their collection. Yet the AIA recognition shed light on what was then an emerging and exciting facet of her practice—architectural tile. “Heath Ceramics have become integral parts of architecture in installations across the United States,” noted the jury. 

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