Leading West Coast Architects Celebrate DnA’s Relaunch in Santa Monica
Eventgoers outside the Tesla Store in Santa Monica. (Micah Cordy)
On Monday, members of LA’s design and architecture cognoscenti descended on the Tesla store on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade to celebrate the official relaunch of KCRW’s DnA (Design and Architecture). The event featured a discussion between DnA host and executive producer Frances Anderton and Elon Musk, the visionary founder-CEO of Tesla and Space X. Those present included Michael Rotondi, Ray Kappe, Thom Mayne, developer Tom Gilmore, and Getty architecture curators Wim de Wit and Christopher Alexander.
Providence Takes Top Award in Bloomberg Mayors Challenge
Bloomberg Philanthropies gives Providence $5 million to implement system to monitor low-income families. (Martha Heinemann Bixby / Flickr)
Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced the winners of its Mayors Challenge, a competition meant to generate innovative ideas for the improvement of city life. Out of the 300 cities that submitted proposals, the giving institution created by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg gave the Grand Prize for Innovation to Providence, RI, and its mayor, Angel Taveras. The city was awarded $5 million to implement its project, what Bloomberg Philanthropies called a “cutting-edge early education initiative.” Under the initiative, participating children will wear a recording device home that will monitor the conversations they have with their parents or other adults. The transcripts of these conversations will then be used to develop weekly coaching sessions in which government monitors or someone will coach the grownups on how better to speak with their children.
Frank Gehry Unveils Mixed-Use Tower For Santa Monica
Frank Gehry’s 22-story tower for Santa Monica. (Courtesy Gehry Partners)
OMA and Robert A.M. Stern are not the only starchitects zeroing in on Santa Monica. Frank Gehry is designing a 22-story, 244-foot-tall tower on a 1.9 acre site on the corner of Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. Plans for the project were submitted to the city yesterday, according to the Santa Monica Planning Department. The tower, located just a block from the beach and around the corner from the 3rd Street Promenade, would house a 125-room hotel, 22 condos, and two stories of retail and restaurants. A 36,000-square-foot art museum, incorporating two landmarked structures, would also be built just north of the tower.
Daly Genik and Machineous Affordably Fabricate Sun Shaded Facades
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To avoid the monotony of a repetitive facade, Daly Genik designed idiosyncratic sun shades for the apartments’ south-facing windows. (Courtesy Iwan Baan)
The fabrication team cut, folded, and welded 264 aluminum panels into 66 uniquely shaped sun shades.
One of the challenges of designing affordable housing, points out Kevin Daly, principal at LA firm Daly Genik Architects, is “managing a balance between the economic forces that demand repeatability and the risk that monotony comes with that repetitiveness.”
Daly Genik and LA fabricators Machineous came up with a great solution for Broadway Apartments, an affordable project at the corner of Broadway and 26th Street in Santa Monica, developed by Community Corporation of Santa Monica. Read More
Architects making music
Architects do a lot of things outside of CAD details. Don’t believe us? Check out Unfrozen Music tomorrow night at the Santa Monica Public Library’s MLK Jr. Auditorium, hosted by AN West Coast Editor Sam Lubell. The concert will feature classical piano, chamber music, and jazz performed by LA architects like John Friedman Alice Kimm’s Alice Kimm, Gensler’s Terrence Young, NBBJ’s Gary Popenoe. And trust us, these guys are good. This is our third year going. More details here.
Saturday in Santa Monica: Architects Make Music
Unfrozen Music, Architects in Concert, on October 22. (Courtesy Shimihara)
Unfrozen Music: Architects in Concert
Santa Monica Main Library
Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 7:00 PM
Tomorrow night a few talented Los Angeles architects—several featured on the pages of AN over the years—will be showing off their skills at the third annual Unfrozen Music, a concert at the Santa Monica Library‘s MLK Auditorium. Emcee’d by AN West Coast Editor Sam Lubell, the lineup ranges from chamber music to jazz to indie rock. And here’s a secret—they’re all really good.
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium Getting Facelift
After attending the recent Alt Build Expo in Santa Monica it became clear to us at AN that the aging Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, a Decorative Modernist structure designed by Welton Becket back in 1958, was in serious need of an update. (Becket, by the way, designed the Capitol Records Building, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and a good deal more of mid-Century Los Angeles.)
Well it looks like our wish is coming true: On May 26 the Santa Monica City Council voted to approve a $47 million remodel and seismic retrofit of the auditorium, using Santa Monica Redevelopment Agency funds (the vote to allocate funds was sped up because such monies may soon be frozen once the state budget is passed).
No firm has been chosen, but we will keep our eyes peeled on the RFP, which was posted here last month. ”They anticipate a design build contract,” said Santa Monica spokesperson Carol Lemlein, who noted that perspective teams will be made up of architects, contractors, engineers, and preservation experts. Read More
Quick Clicks> Capping Highways, Flying Meteors, Infrastructure Pop, Old School Ivy
Proposed highway-straddling structure in Santa Monica. (Courtesy Curbed)
Capping Santa Monica. Curbed LA got some great renderings from students at USC who where charged with imagining even more highway caps for the Pacific Coast Highway, this time from Arizona to California Avenues. Beyond freeway parks, the students proposed housing, hotels, and community centers.
Breaking Whitney. With the deal signed for the Met to take over the Whitney‘s Breuer building on Madison, directors at the ground breaking for the new branch at the High Line had all the more reason to celebrate. DNA reminds readers that the museum is actually retuning home. Ol’ Gerty got the ball rolling on 8th Street way back in 1930.
Dylan Sings. Happy B-day Bobby! Bob Dylan turned 70 on Tuesday and in celebration the Infrastructurist presents Dylan’s Ten Best Infrastructure Songs, including “The Levee’s Gonna Break” and “Marchin’ to the City.”
Old School. Design New Haven has the Robert A.M. Stern drawings for “street calming measures” at Yale that are part of the $600 million for renovations, including two new residential colleges. The plan includes mixed use buildings intended to encourage street life at all hours and improved access to the Farmington Canal Greenway .
Scarpa is King of the World (Updated!)
Colorado Court (Courtesy Brooks & Scarpa)
[ Updated 02.08.2011: Added the interview video, a gallery of Scarpa's 502 Colorado project, and more. ]
You know you’ve hit the big time when you’re not only invited to appear on Oprah, but you’re interviewed by Leonard DiCaprio on Oprah. Such is the case with Larry Scarpa, of Santa Monica firm Brooks + Scarpa, who talked to Leo about his former firm Pugh + Scarpa’s 502 Colorado in Santa Monica, which DiCaprio calls the “first green affordable housing project in the country.”
Click through to watch the interview, see the project, and more!
Say Goodbye To The Pugh in Pugh+Scarpa
Pugh+Scarpa's Cherokee Lofts
AN has just learned that Gwynne Pugh of well-known Santa Monica firm Pugh + Scarpa has decided to leave the firm to start his own company, Gwynne Pugh Urban Studio. Pugh and Lawrence Scarpa have led the firm for the past 22 years—Pugh actually hired Scarpa in the ’80s. Pugh’s new company, which “specializes in the design of structures, urban design, planning, sustainability, and consultation to companies and public entities,” launched on September 1. In 2011, firm principal (and Scarpa’s wife) Angela Brooks, who now runs Pugh+Scarpa’s sustainable development department, will be elevated to principal-in-charge, precipitating a new firm name: Brooks+Scarpa. The firm would not comment on the changes (and Pugh’s profile is already off the firm’s site), but we will keep you informed as more information becomes available.
Spruce Up a Parking Lot
The Santa Monica City Council recently approved an installation by Ball Nogues for a renovated parking garage.
Despite the frustration of having to drive everywhere, often sitting through interminable traffic, at least Angelinos can boast some of the prettiest parking structures in the country. One of the latest to the game is Pugh + Scarpa’s dressed up garages for the redeveloped Santa Monica Place mall, garages that were originally designed by the same man behind the now demolished mall, Frank Gehry himself. Not content to simply dress up some old garages with a flashy new facade, the mall has dedicated space on each of the two parking structures for art installations Read More
Wait Just A Minute Santa Monica
Just when we thought that Santa Monica was all set to get Eli Broad’s new art museum (Santa Monica City Council is expected to vote on an “agreement in principal” for the museum on January 19), the LA Times gets an email from the Broad Foundation saying it wouldn’t make up its mind on a location for a few months. In the email, dated January 13, the Broad Foundation said: “There are more than three cities that have expressed an interest in the Broad Art Foundation headquarters/museum. Discussions are still ongoing, so we can’t say more at this point. But we’re keeping our options open and hope to make a decision on a location this spring.” The story also seems to resolve the location of that mysterious third possible location for the museum: a 10-acre parcel on the campus of West L.A. College in Culver City (although West L.A. College President Mark Rocha said he hasn’t heard a peep from Broad). This saga will obviously be drawn out until 2050, so we prescribe patience for those who want an answer soon.
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