LACMA Prepares its Giant Rock
The rock is wedged against its steel transporter. (All images courtesy LACMA)
If all goes according to plan, sometime in early October an enormous boulder will leave a Riverside, California quarry and a couple of weeks later roll onto the grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to become an installation called Levitated Mass.
In Other WEHO News..
Courtesy City of West Hollywood
Despite the controversy over Ed Fickett’s now-endangered West Hollywood Library, the city’s new library, designed by architects Johnson Favaro, is set to open to the public this Saturday. The 32,000 square-foot project, with its undulating white facade, will feature two large murals by artist Shepard Fairey (part of a collaboration by Vanity Fair magazine and Cadillac) as well as an interior installation by artist David Wiseman. The master plan for the area calls for 2.5 acres of parkland and open space, new tennis courts and 400 parking spaces in two municipal garages. We’ll be taking a closer look at all this after the library opens, so stay tuned…
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IwamotoScott Architecture: Bookshelf Screen Wall
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(Courtesy IwamotoScott)
Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott, principals at IwamotoScott Architecture first established a relationship with Obscura Digital, a digital media company, three years ago in order to collaborate on a new hemispheric theater encased in a geodesic dome in Dubai. While the project was scuttled by the recession, the two firms stayed in touch, and when Obscura acquired new office space in a 1940s-era warehouse in an up-and-coming San Francisco neighborhood, they again called on IwamotoScott to design it, and even invited the architects to move into their new space.
Working with a tight budget, IwamotoScott injected digitally fabricated details that would give focus and add drama to the large industrial space. A black-box conference room that Scott describes as bringing “shrink-wrap to seismic bracing” is perched on the edge of a second-floor mezzanine while a 32-foot laser-cut screen wall comprised of cells that appear to collapse into fluid scales sequesters the architect’s space within the digital media company’s headquarters.
West Coast Park(ing) Day Diary
Standard's park on Sunset Blvd in LA's Silver Lake neighborhood. (Carren Jao)
What if we could transform part of the massive space we dedicate to urban parking into public parks, and what would it look like? On Friday, over 100 cities worldwide participated in the sixth annual PARK(ing) Day, where citizens and designers temporarily converted metered parking spots into open public space. While we couldn’t jet set around the world, a couple of our reporters checked out the happenings in California, where the concept was born.
Before you check out the parks, we should mention that these grassroots efforts are slowly influencing permanent change. In San Francisco, a City Planning Department collaboration with design firm Rebar, which helped begin PARK(ing) Day, has led to the creation of the “Parklets” program, where parking spots around the city are being converted into permanent plazas and outdoor seating. And on Friday, LA City Council members Jan Perry and Jose Huizar announced a partnership with local neighborhood groups in downtown LA and Eagle Rock to begin a Parklets pilot program in Los Angeles. Read More
What’s Out There Weekend San Francisco: September 17-18
At the Oakland Museum of California, Dan Kiley's roof terraces are on the tour circuit in What's Out There Weekend San Francisco. Courtesy T.L. Cheung
The San Francisco Bay Area is home to many landmark works of modern landscape architecture. While the names of Lawrence Halprin, Robert Royston, and Dan Kiley may not be known to a general public that just recently latched on to Eames and Neutra, the Washington, D.C.-based Cultural Landscape Foundation is trying to change that. This weekend, it is holding What’s Out There Weekend San Francisco, free tours of publicly accessible landscapes across the region, from San Francisco proper to Oakland down to Santa Clara. Read More
Arquitectonica Cozies Up to DS+R in LA
Arquitectonica's potential addition to Grand Avenue in LA. (courtesy blogdowntown)
Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Broad center for contemporary art features a distinctive structural honeycomb facade. It may be getting a neighbor with another notable facade, a new 19 story apartment building with staggered windows in a variety of sizes designed by Miami-based Arquitectonica. According to blogdowntown, the building would include 258 units with 52 set aside for affordable housing and 308 parking spaces in a three level below-grade garage. Developed by Related Companies, the tower would share the plaza with DS+R’s museum and back up to the planned Regional Connector light rail station.
Mesmerizing SCI-Arc Graduation Pavilion
Courtesy Oyler Wu Collaborative
SCI-Arc held its graduation ceremony on Sunday in the parking lot in front of its building in LA’s Arts District. And they did it in style: in front of a billowing 60 x 110 foot canopy designed by LA firm Oyler Wu Collaborative, whose principles Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu are both SCI-Arc professors. Read More
Burning Man Amazes Yet Again
Temple of Transition (Michael Holden)
For the second year in a row (check out last year’s report here) we’d like to share some of the most amazing, ridiculous, and inspiring architecture of Burning Man, which just wrapped up in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. And like last year the Playa’s temporary installations didn’t disappoint; displaying an aggressive level of imagination and ambition for Burning Man’s 25th anniversary (has it really been that long?).
The theme this year was Rites of Passage, although we’re not sure the artists here are interested in following any rules. Photographer Michael Holden was on the ground to document the event. Here are our favorites from Burning Man 2011:
Event> Eva Hagberg & Roy McMakin Talk Design in Berkeley
Roy McMakin's True House is one of 24 notable projects featured in Nature Framed. (Courtesy Tom Fowlks)
Discussion: Eva Hagberg & Roy McMakin
University Press Books
Berkeley, California
Thursday, September 8, 2011
6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Writer Eva Hagberg’s new book, Nature Framed: At Home in the Landscape (The Monacelli Press, 2011, $50), has a granola-crunchy-sounding title, but the architecture inside is as sharp as it gets. From a delicate floating house on Lake Huron by MOS to Anderson Anderson Architecture’s acrylic-clad Chameleon House in Michigan, these houses are not, for the most part, about blending in.
Among the 24 projects included in the book is True House in Seattle by artist/furniture designer/architect Roy McMakin, who also recently published a monograph titled Roy McMakin: When is a chair not a chair? where he details his often-whimsical furniture designs from the past 30 years.
Catch both minds at Berkeley’s University Press Books for a discussion on design this Thursday!
UCSB Shortlist Has All The Big Names
The San Joaquin Apartments will be located within the red circle above (courtesy UCSB)
Yes, things are slow these days, so we’re looking at every RFP we can. One of the biggest in Southern California is for the new San Joaquin Apartments at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), which will include two buildings housing 1,000 students as well as a revitalized neighborhood center. The RFP was issued in June, and we just got our hands on the shortlist, which was posted on August 26. The winner should be announced very shortly. Below are the finalists, including some very impressive names.
Eric Owen Moss to Receive Jencks Award
Moss' proposed Jefferson Tower in Culver City
LA architect Eric Owen Moss will receive the 2011 Jencks Award, an annual prize named for British architect and critic Charles Jencks recognizing “major international contributions to the theory and practice of architecture.” Previous winners of the award include Zaha Hadid, Foreign Office Architects, Peter Eisenman, Cecil Balmond, UNStudio, Wolf Prix & Coop Himmelb(l)au, Charles Correa, and Steven Holl. The award will be presented on December 6 at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.
Best known for his highly experimental work in Culver City’s Hayden Tract, a former industrial area transformed into creative offices, Moss is now planning several projects around Los Angeles. Below is a small collection of recent and upcoming work from his firm: Read More
Help! Only Two Votes Needed To Fix California’s Infill Policy
California Capitol Building. (Courtesy jjkbach)
Okay, let’s take advantage of this Democracy thing, folks… Today you have the rare opportunity to shape urban planning policy in California by convincing a few swing voters in the state’s Senate to support AB 710, the Infill Development and Sustainable Community Act of 2011. Apparently the bill is two votes shy of passage. If passed it would do a number of things to improve the state’s sprawling urban development policy, including… Read More
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