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
SCI-Arc Nomadic No More
A look at SCI-Arc's Santa Fe Depot building (bottom).
Finally. After 39 years of wandering around Los Angeles and trying to convince its landlord to sell, SCI-Arc today announced that it has bought its building in LA’s Downtown Arts District. The 1,250 foot-long Santa Fe Freight Yard Depot building, a reinforced concrete structure designed by architect Harrison Albright, stretches seemingly forever along Santa Fe Avenue. Students like to bike or skateboard inside it to get to class.
The school moved to the former rail depot 10 years ago after a 2001 renovation by architect Gary Paige. The school’s opening came when building owner Meruelo Maddux Properties filed for bankruptcy—meaning it really needed the money. The school bought the property for $23.1 million. Other homes for the school have included Marina Del Rey and Santa Monica. But now it finally has a real home.
And their edgy, coarse and lively corner of downtown, as SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss has pointed out, is where it’s always wanted to be. “SCI-Arc is absolutely committed to Downtown,” he told AN in a recent interview, adding that the area is a laboratory for architectural and urban development. “We are staying Downtown. Period.”
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.
Moss on the Market
Cool and convivial: Moss' Lawson-Westen House was designed with warmth and friendship in mind. (Tom Bonner)
Deep-pocketed house-hunters on the prowl for an architectural icon this summer are in luck: The critically acclaimed Lawson-Westen House, designed by Los Angeles architect Eric Owen Moss, is on the market for the first time. The 5,100-square-foot Brentwood home remains the architect’s largest residential project and is an oft-cited example of the spatial subdivisions and geometric shifts that characterize much of LA’s modern architecture. Read More
Moss Out In Venice
According to our friends at Curbed LA, Eric Owen Moss’s planned Venice project , on the corners of Venice and Lincoln Boulevards, has been put on the shelf. Fred Mir, who works for the developer, Group III Investments, told Curbed that the neighborhood “didn’t like the height,” and that they had decided to scrap the project back in August, after a bumpy community meeting. No sign of what will replace Moss’s scheme, but we’ll be looking into it…
Kings of Curbed
Some Curbed fan favorites: The Standard Hotel in New York, San Francisco's de Young Museum, and the Caltrans HQ in LA.
It must be said that Curbed, in its short life, has become one of the preeminent sites for not just real estate but also architecture and planning news, one of—not the, mind you, as that would us—best places for info on the evolving built environments of New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. They are most certainly in our Top 10. Reaffirming that fact is a Top 10 of Curbed’s own, a celebration of the best buildings of the past decade, something the site(s) weren’t around to see the dawning of, though who cares, since neither were we. Read More
Moss: SCI-Arc Staying Put
Architect and SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss talked to us the other day to correct our recent post on SCI-Arc’s future in the LA Arts District. Yes, he agreed, SCI-Arc does want to eventually own its own home (it tried unsuccessfully to buy its building from its landlord, developer Meruelo Maddux, a few years ago) . But the school’s lease is not up next year, nor does SCI-Arc face any pressure to leave anytime soon.
“SCI-ARC’s not going anywhere. SCI-Arc has no plans to go anywhere, and is not obligated to go anywhere,” he said. Read More
Eavesdrop CA 06
Coming to Town: AIA/LA is looking to build a center for architecture like the one in New York. (Courtesy AIANY)
PACKING UP CAMP
Now that Donald Fisher’s CAMP project in San Francisco is officially dead, talk is swirling about where the Gap founder’s art collection will go. The whispers have focused on one obvious suspect: SFMOMA, which has already begun planning a 100,000-square-foot expansion that could get even bigger. One rumor has it that the museum is talking to the city about acquiring an adjoining fire station and building a new one elsewhere in return, in order to offer the Fishers their own digs. SFMOMA director Neal Benezra coyly parried questions with the comment: “We welcome the opportunity to partner with the Fishers to find a home for their collection as part of an expanded SFMOMA campus.” Read More
Inside The Mind Of Moss
At SCI-Arc last Wednesday Eric Owen Moss, introduced by good friend Thom Mayne (who broke Moss’s brain down into its essential parts, as seen above), lectured on his firm’s most recent projects; an impressive combination of new technology, structural research, and wild rule-bending that has unfortunately produced precious few actual buildings, but many competition near-misses around the world. The good news is that this trend is turning around, Read More
Stairway to Heaven
Taking the stairs, photo by Scott Mayoral
The SCI-Arc Gallery’s techno-thumping, wine-spattered opening nights are the place for local architects to drink and be drunk. The latest revelry celebrated the debut installation by Oyler Wu Collaborative, who are quickly becoming the hottest new duo in LA architecture. Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu‘s recent exhibitions include Density Fields at Materials & Applications and Pendulum Plane for the new LA Forum space. And now, Live Wire, which takes their massive aluminum tubing structures to the next level—literally!
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