Architecture is on Display at the Venice Art Walk
Exterior of Google's new HQ in Venice. (IK's World Trip/Flickr)
Trust us, you don’t want to miss this weekend’s Venice Art Walk & Auctions (May 19-20), which in addition to showing off the area’s wealth of art studios and galleries, will introduce you to some of its finest new architecture. That’s impressive because everybody knows that Venice has more architects per square foot than pretty much anywhere else.
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.”
LA Firm Layer Stretching Lightness Across So Cal
Layer's upcoming "A Loose Horizon" at PMCA. (Courtesy Layer)
Los Angeles firm Layer (you may remember some of their past work) are showcasing their talents once again with an upcoming exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA). Opening June 3, the show, entitled Layer: A Loose Horizon is designed as a low-relief, web-like sculptural installation that begins outside the museum’s second floor window and continues into the interior of the building, across the lobby.
The series of overhead shapes “explores the threshold between perception and logic,” and creates “a physically engrossing and intellectually stimulating spatial construction,” according to the PMCA.
First Look at NBBJ’s New Amazon Complex in Seattle
An early design rendering of Amazon's Block 20.
The largest development proposed in the history of downtown Seattle—an approximately 3 million square-foot headquarters for Amazon—may take eight years to complete. Project details presented at a recent downtown design review committee meeting revealed that Amazon’s glassy three block project, designed by NBBJ (designers of the recently-c0mpleted Gates Foundation, also in Seattle), will be built in three phases of two to four years.
Watch the Broad Museum Come to Life in Real-Time
The Broad Museum's live construction cam. (Broad Foundation)
While cameras allowing real-time viewing of work on downtown LA’s Broad museum have been in place since construction began last fall, the scenery is finally getting more interesting. The structure’s parking garage is now complete and construction permits were recently approved for the museum itself, according to LA Downtown News.
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.
Seattle’s Current Generation
Adam Frank, center, in front of his installation, Current, at the Armory/Center House at the Seattle Center. (Ariel Rosenstock)
Just steps away from the Space Needle, locals and visitors can see how hydroelectric power is generated, transmitted, and consumed in Seattle. Projected on the giant north facing wall of the Armory/Center House, the installation Current, by Brooklyn-based artist Adam Frank, uses light to create a real-time map of electricity distribution through the city’s neighborhoods. Frank was recently named artist-in-residence at the city’s public utility company Seattle City Light (SCL), and this is his first project. His art is part of a series of events taking place through October at the Seattle Center, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Seattle 1962 Exhibition.
Archi-Crime of the year: Lloyd Wright’s Moore House Destroyed
Moore House before demolition (Stephen Russo)
Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, was one of California’s most talented modernist architects, but he was overshadowed by his father’s fame and notoriety. Wright’s lack of press largely led to the destruction yesterday of his Moore House (1958) in Palos Verdes, a ritzy beach town near Los Angeles. Apparently, when the owners of the property planned the demolition they had never heard of the architect. The city council denied an appeal from the Los Angeles Conservancy, and now the winged, x-shaped house is gone. According to Curbed, the owner wants to build a Mediterranean McMansion in its place. Read More
Downtown LA Streetcar Nears Approval
Rendering of the proposed streetcar (LA Streetcar Inc)
The dream of again riding a streetcar in Downtown LA is one step closer to reality. Blogdowntown reports that an environmental review is now underway for two potential routes. The two paths, each four-miles long, were selected as part of the federally-required Alternatives Analysis (AA) process and were recently sent to METRO’s Planning & Programming Committee and Construction Committee.
On View> LACMA Presents Robert Adams: The Place We Live
New development on a former citrus-growing estate, Highland, California, 1983. (Robert Adams/LACMA)
Robert Adams: The Place We Live
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
Through June 3
In his 45 years photographing the American West, Robert Adams has documented the evolution of landscape and our relationship to it. In response to the rapid development of his surroundings in Colorado Springs and Denver, Adams began photographing a landscape marked by tract housing, highways, and gas stations. His photographs, Adams says, “document a separation from ourselves, and in turn from the natural world that we professed to love.” Nearly 300 prints showcase Adams’ career, from his early shots of Colorado’s desolate terrain to his recent works documenting migrating birds in the Pacific Northwest, with special focus on his portrayal of the Los Angeles region.
View a gallery of Robert Adams’s photography after the jump.
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.
Or at least that’s the goal of Los Angeles Walks!, a pedestrian advocacy group that aims to make walking accessible and safe in a city that has long been stereotyped as car-centric. Among other things the group recommends improvements to dangerous intersections through better crosswalk design, better way finding, road diets (aka street slimming), and various policy changes. This Saturday evening the group is hosting the Los Angeles Walks Karaoke Fundraiser at Atwater Crossing in LA’s Atwater Village. Get out there and sing! And if you drive there, at least park a few blocks away…
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