Exploring Kappe in the Valley
Outside the Hayes House. (Carren Jao)
The Southern California chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) recently capped off a Ray Kappe-focused weekend with a home tour around Kappe’s many Sherman Oaks homes. As part of the series, The Architect’s Newspaper got a chance to peek inside one of Kappe’s earliest works, the Dr. and Mrs. Robert Hayes House.
San Carlos Library, The Best Place to See a Solar Eclipse
(Courtesy Swatt Miers)
With its perforated dome, the twelve-year-old San Carlos (CA) Library, designed by Swatt Miers Architects, turned out to be one of the best places to view the solar eclipse a few weeks ago. The design—which projected thousands of little crescent moons over the main lobby entrance—was inspired by architect George Miers’ wife. “We wanted to bring in light, but a traditional skylight over that type of space would overpower it. Luckily, my wife had this old colander. I built the model with the colander in it,” said Miers. The architect developed a random pattern for the ceiling and fabricated it with Los Angeles-based Ceilings Plus.
Digitizing Saarinen’s Miller House
The Miller House (Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art)
Even if Columbus, Indiana is not on your travel itinerary Eero Saarinen’s Miller House and Garden may come to you via the internet. Last week, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) announced a $190,000 grant from the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) to digitize its Miller House and Garden Collection. The house—a celebrated collaboration between architect Saarinen, interior designer Alexander Girard, and landscape architect Dan Kiley—opened for tours last year , and the museum reports more than 6,500 tour tickets were sold. With the increased interest comes a growing number of requests from researchers asking for access to the home’s archives. While in good condition, the museum writes in their NEH proposal that “repeated handling would quickly degrade these important and unique materials.” Read More
Still Time For A Zen Experience In Downtown LA
The zen garden hosts the Mare Nubium dance performance. (Hirokazu Kosaka)
The Japanese American Cultural & Community Center’s first annual spring festival, LA Bloom wrapped up on May 5, but late visitors to the Little Tokyo site in Downtown LA can still enjoy a piece of the festivities. LA Bloom’s centerpiece ecoartspace installation will remain up for a few extra weeks. Using over five million pebbles, JACCC Artistic Director Hirokazu Kosaka and landscape architect Calvin Abe of AHBE created a large zen garden that, during the festival (along with thousands of feet of colorful thread) created a serene background for Kosaka’s evocative Mare Nubium performances.
“It isn’t something that can be experienced through description. It would be like explaining what it’s like to be present watching the original moon landing,” said Abe, for whom the space created a “profound existential experience.”
House Hunting: LACMA Tours LA’s Finest Historic Residences
Inside Arthur Rolland Kelly's Tudor Revival. (Carren Jao)
Los Angeles enjoyed its customary sunshine last Sunday, making it the perfect time to peek inside some of the city’s most exclusive historic homes, thanks to LACMA’s Art Museum Council, the museum’s volunteer support group. The council has been putting up an annual art and architecture tour, supporting the museum, for the past 56 years. In this year’s run, the council shared four homes of varying styles. AN was afforded a glimpse of the high life, not to mention lessons on how to display a LOT of objects.
Late Bloomr: Silver Lake Centerpiece Delayed
Rendering of "Bloomrs," planned as a future Silver Lake landmark (All That Is Solid)
The building of a proposed neighborhood symbol on the corner of Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards in Silver Lake has been pushed back due to lack of funds. After winning the Envisioning Silver Lake competition last summer, LA firm ALLTHATISSOLID (ATIS) has been working with the city’s Bureau of Street Services (BSS) to scale back and refine the design, called “Bloomrs,” to fit the $100,000 budget with room for curbing and other street improvements included. The saddle-shaped structure, made of Cor-ten steel, has already been re-designed to occupy a smaller footprint and rises to a shorter height.
Celebrate Earth Day With a “Neutra Run-Walk” in Silver Lake
Silver Lake Reservoir, home of the Neutra Run-Walk for Health.
Architecture lovers, time to get motivated. This Earth Day (April 22) you can celebrate Richard Neutra’s 120th birthday by participating in the Neutra Run-Walk for Health, a 4k or 8k jaunt around LA’s Silver Lake Reservoir. “Neutra always stood for health, so it made sense to host this event,” said Dion Neutra, son of the famous architect. Neutra says he hopes the walk will become an annual event for the Neutra Institute.
Touring LA Architecture By… Bike?
Bikers visiting Pierre Koenig's Case Study House 22
Los Angeles is a great city for architecture. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to breeze past landmarks inside our cars with barely a moment’s notice. A group of young designers and cyclists in LA are looking to slow you down and up your appreciation level by setting up regular free bicycle tours to some of the city’s most iconic architectural sights.
Rethink/LA Imagines The Future Los Angeles
Architects Taalman Koch reimagine LA's Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant as a recreation area and animal habitat.
Los Angeles is a shifty creature, ever-changing and re-inventing itself. As memories of the perfect weekend (aka Carmageddon) fade into memory, a collaboration of creative professionals is looking to re-focus our collective consciousness on Los Angeles’ past, present, and what it might look like in fifty years. Opening this Thursday at the A+D Museum on Wilshire Boulevard, Rethink/LA’s Perspectives on a Future City captures the voices of local Angelenos—writers, city planners, policymakers, and artists—through sound installations, collages, and videos.
Free Tickets! LA Design Festival Means LOTS to Do
Los Angeles is gearing up for a two week, citywide celebration of design in its first ever edition of the L.A. Design Festival. (Ticket giveaway details at the end of the post!) The ladf, which launched last night, features an overwhelming number of events (more than 20!), including the Dwell on Design Conference (June 24-26), the AIA/LA Design Conference (June 24), A+D Museum’s Come In! 2 (June 14-July 24) tours of Richard Neutra’s VDL House (June 18 and 25) and Kanner Architects’ new Lafayette Park Rec Center (tonight), and a load of panels and parties, including Design for Demographics, which investigates how our changing population is influencing the design process. And don’t miss this highlight: Silver Lake non-profit Materials & Applications is staging a provocative look inside some of LA’s more daring design firms this weekend. The self-guided Summer Series—which also doubles as a fundraiser for M&A’s future installations—includes tours inside the creative spaces of past and future collaborators with the organization, like Ball Nogues Studio, Oyler Wu Collaborative, LOHA and the Office of Mobile Design.
Eric Moss Cactus Tower Turns Things Upside Down
©Tom Bonner
Don’t look now, Eric Owen Moss has put another landmark along the eastern edge of Culver City with the completion of the Cactus Tower on Hayden tract. Upending the usual relationship of earth and sky, he’s placed cactus plants high above the air, suspending them within a severe steel frame.
Bestor Unleashes Disco Silencio at SCI-Arc
Architectural exhibition openings are hardly known for their cool vibe, but that’s apparently because they’re not usually put on by LA-based Barbara Bestor Architecture. On April 1 SCI-Arc opened Bestor’s Disco Silencio to a crowd very eager to party. The installation at the SCI-Arc gallery is a demi-dodecahedron formed in plywood meant to be a silent retreat for frazzled SCI-Arc architecture students (at least when the DJ isn’t spinning and disco lights are whirling).
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