Parklets Spreading Throughout California, Reach Long Beach
Long Beach parklet (courtesy Studio One Eleven)
Our friend Alissa Walker reports in LA Weekly that San Francisco’s Parklet craze (SF now has 23 of the parks built on former parking spaces) has reached the streets of Long Beach. Designed by Studio One Eleven, Southern California’s first parklet is a 30-foot-by-7-foot space with wood decking just outside of the city’s Lola’s Mexican restaurant. Lola’s owner, Luis Navarro, paid for the $20,000 parklet, plus the cost of the chairs and tables. According to the story two more Long Beach parklets will be opening in the next few months—one at a coffee shop and one at a Vietnamese restaurant. Meanwhile LA is on the way to getting its own parklets (hopefully) thanks to the launch of its Parklets Program at the end of last year.
The House That Dr. Seuss’ Wife Rebuilt
A porch outside Geisel House (courtesy UCSD)
The University of California Board of Regents yesterday approved the second phase of the rehabilitation of UC San Diego’s University House. Located on seven acres in La Jolla Farms, the eccentric 1952 structure was designed by noted Santa Fe architect William Lumpkins. It has been closed since 2004 when it was pronounced uninhabitable because of seismic and system deficiencies. Here’s the best part: the house will be renamed the Audrey Geisel University House, in honor of the widow of author Theodor ‘Dr. Seuss’ Geisel, a longtime philanthropic supporter of the campus. Mrs. Geisel has donated more than 8,000 of her husband’s original drawings, sketches, books, and other memorabilia to the university libraries and donated more than $20 million to UCSD. The entire cost of the Geisel House renovation, estimated at $10.5 million, will be covered by gift funds including $1.5 million gifted from the UC Office of the President.
President Obama’s Alma Mater Occidental College is finishing up work on a $6.8 million, 1-megawatt ground-mounted solar array. When finished this spring it will be one of the largest ground-mounted arrays in Los Angeles, generating about 11 percent of the College’s annual electrical usage. Led by physics professor Daniel Snowden-Ifft, the array’s 4,886 panels will be mounted on top of shade structures in a campus parking lot and on a nearby hillside.
Pier Won: Michael Maltzan’s Lens Selected for St. Petersburg
MALTZAN'S "LENS" WOULD BECOME THE ACTIVE CENTER OF ST. PETERSBURG AS WELL AS TRANSFORMING ITS IMAGE. (COURTESY CITY OF ST. PETERSBURG)
Michael Maltzan Architecture has won the competition to redesign St. Petersburg, Florida’s iconic pier. In a group of ambitious proposals from the likes of West 8 and BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Maltzan’s scheme was perhaps the most so, with a group of interconnected bridges and pathways arranged along a figure-8 plan leading to a large shell-structure at its end. Called “The Lens,” the gigantic project will frame the city through its structure and create a connection between downtown St. Petersburg and its waterfront. It will include a new tidal reef, a civic green, raised walking paths, an amphitheater, a water park and other leisure activities. More on this breaking story to come shortly.
Art and architecture merge at new Matthew Marks gallery
(Joshua White)
Matthew Marks Gallery tonight opens its new West Hollywood gallery, designed by architect Peter Zellner. The white, cube-shaped, 3,500 square foot building is highlighted by a huge sculpture by Ellsworth Kelly, which makes sense given that the gallery’s opening show, Ellsworth Kelly: Los Angeles, opens tomorrow. The sculpture, a dark colored bar measuring 8×40 feet, has been installed 30 feet off the ground, jutting ten inches out from the building facade, creating a floating effect. The metal sandwich panel structure was hung via a series of steel plates, “like hanging a painting,” said Zellner. Of course that’s a painting that weighs 5,000 pounds. Inside the lofty, spare gallery space, with its eight skylights, will be showing off some of Kelly’s finest work, including two works that inspired the facade piece: the collage Study for Black and White Panels (1954), and the painting Black Over White (1966).
John Lautner's demolished Shusett House. (Tyco Saariste)
Patch reports that Beverly Hills, in part responding to the destruction of modernist landmarks like John Lautners’s Shusett House and Sydney Eisenshtat’s Friar’s Club, has finally passed a preservation ordinance. It’s about time.
Patrick Martin.
Very sad news in the LA architecture world. AC Martin associate Patrick Martin has died at the age of 35, after a battle with cancer. The fourth generation architect (AC Martin was founded by his grandfather over 100 years ago) had worked at the firm for 11 years. Martin is survived by his wife Danielle and their children, Thomas and William.
SCI-Arc’s CHIP House Takes A Bow In LA
(Ryan Tyler Martinez/ SCI-Arc)
After winning one of the top prizes at the Solar Decathlon competition, SCI-Arc and Caltech’s CHIP House is returning to Los Angeles for a victory lap. The unique net zero structure—with quilted, vinyl-covered polyester insulation stretched around its angled exterior—will be open to the public at the California Science Center in LA’s Exposition Park starting on Tuesday. It will stay there through the end of May.
FXFOWLE and CO Architects form Bi-Coastal Coalition
FXFOWLE'S SAP Americas Headquarters (David Sundberg/Esto)
They seem hesitant to call it a merger, but architecture biggies FXFOWLE and CO Architects announced today that they are joining forces in a “joint venture.” The New York and Los Angeles firms made the move, they said in a release, “In order to expand each firm’s geographic and expertise reach.” The companies will maintain their individual identities, with the exception of joint projects, under which they’ll be called CO/FXFOWLE.
CO Architects, it should be noted, is known for its institutional and healthcare work, while FXFOWLE’s portfolio, marked by its focus on sustainability, is a little more wide-ranging, from architecture to interior design to planning.
The move actually took place in December, and the firms are emphatic that both will remain on equal footing. The deal, said the announcement, “represents a genuine collaboration between the two firms in all project services, rather than the customary design architect/associate architect relationship.”
Architect Kendrick Kellogg’s landmark GG’s Island Restaurant in Rancho Mirage, CA burst into flames this morning. The 3,000 square foot eatery, once home to the Chart House, is famed for its twisting, seashell-like design. Kellogg’s organic designs can be found throughout Southern California, particularly around San Diego and in the Mojave Desert. According to Cal Fire, more than 50 firefighters and 12 engines from the Riverside County Fire Department and the Palm Springs Fire Department were on scene at the peak of the blaze. [Mercury News]
Our friends at The Onion go architectural by “reporting” on a stoner architect who designed a mansion out of just foyers. The same Minneapolis-based architect, the story describes, had won past admiration for a subterranean ranch house and a roofless A-Frame. Unfortunately “The work of stoner architects is tragically underfunded, and few, if any, of their designs have ever actually been built outside of the annual Burning Man festival,” said Doug “Bong Hit” Cirillo, an Austin, TX, stoner architect. Where can we get a subscription to the Stoner Architectural Digest?
New Year Brings CRA Disaster in California
The CRA's dissolution could be the final death knell for the $3 billion Grand Avenue Project (The Related Companies)
Now that California’s Redevelopment Association (CRA) has doubled down and lost its bet with the California Supreme Court, leading to the scrapping of all the state’s CRAs, building projects across the state are in severe jeopardy. There are about 400 municipal redevelopment agencies in the state. Here are the projects in trouble for just one (albeit the largest): the Los Angeles CRA. They include nearly $100 million in grant funds to improve public infrastructure and create affordable housing and transit oriented development, the 126-unit Noho Senior Arts Colony in North Hollywood, the renovation of the historic Westlake Theater near downtown, the 35,000 square foot Wattstar Theater in Watts, the Cleantech Manufacturing Center south of downtown, and the biggest, the $3 billion Grand Avenue Project downtown. More than 20 projects in total are in danger. More to come on this huge news, including more lawsuits than you ever wanted to see.
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