DELIRIOUS LA

August 24, 2015

Talking Shelter with Sam Lubell & Danielle Rago

Shelter: Rethinking How We Live in Los Angeles, on view at the A+D Museum through November 6, challenges architects and designers to create residential solutions that respond to a changing city. Commissioned projects address pressing issues facing the cultural and physical landscape. Co-curated by Sam Lubell and Danielle Rago the exhibition features the new work by Bureau Spectacular, LA Más, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, MAD Architects, PAR, and wHY. The exhibition also highlights recently constructed or in-progress housing solutions a number of L.A. firms. The Forum spoke to the curators about how we live in Los Angeles.

What can we learn about LA housing compared to housing in other cities?

DR: Shelter is a basic human need. We decided to focus the show on this subject on account of the museum’s relocation to its new home in the Arts District, as well as the long lineage of important residential architecture in the city. The Los Angeles single-family home has long been studied and replicated in places outside of the city, but Los Angeles’ needs have shifted. The ideas presented highlight housing that is reflective of a new L.A., one that is more dense, with less buildable land, new transit offerings, growing diversity, ballooning costs, and intense environmental challenges —issues that other cities are also facing.

How does a cities infrastructure influence our housing conditions?

SL: Infrastructure has always been a major driver of housing in cities, from aqueducts to castle walls to freeways. We wanted to focus on housing near two of the most important infrastructure projects in the city now: the redevelopment of the Los Angeles River and the extension of Metro’s Purple Line along Wilshire Boulevard. They’re driving huge changes in development, and represent a city that is changing dramatically from the suburban-style development that it is traditionally known for.

Why pick L.A. architects to look at these parts of the city as opposed to architects and designers outside of the city?

SL: We chose designers that have been investigating issues in L.A. for some time, although some of the firms, like MAD and Bureau Spectacular, are recent transplants. We also wanted a mix of established firms and younger, more experimental ones. Overall we’re very pleased with the mix, and we think we’ve got a great variety of perspectives.

Photo: Proposal for Wilshire looking East. Rendering by PAR.

LOS ANGELES EVENTS

Lecture: Michael Meredith & Hilary Sample, MOS Architects at USC

August 26, 2015, 6:00 pm

Along with his partner, Hilary Sample, Michael Meredith is a principal of MOS, an internationally recognized architecture practice based in New York. His writing has appeared in Artforum, LOG, Perspecta, Praxis, Domus, and Harvard Design Magazine. Meredith previously taught at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, the University of Michigan, where he was awarded the Muschenheim Fellowship, and the University of Toronto.

Making Space: 5 Women Changing the Face of Architecture at Helms Bakery

August 27, 2015 – 6:00 PM

Making Space: 5 Women Changing the Face of Architecture brings to the screen the personal journeys and outstanding designs of Annabelle Selldorf, Farshid Moussavi, Odile Decq, Marianne McKenna and Kathryn Gustafson revealing how these women are succeeding in a profession long dominated by men. Prior to the screening there will be a Panel Discussion with KCRW DnA host, Frances Anderton and panelists Annie Chu, Lisa Gimmy, Kay Kollar and Elissa Scrafano.

BUST at Jai & Jai Gallery

Opening Reception August 29, 7:00 pm

Jai & Jai Gallery presents, BUST, a group exhibition guest curated by William O’Brien Jr., Principal of WOJR, Co-Founder of Collective–LOK, and Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Architecture. BUST displays a spectrum of leanings on the role of characteristics associated with the traditional façade such as frontality, proportionality, anthropomorphism, zoomorphism, figuration, and symmetry within contemporary architecture and art. The distinct attitudes of eleven architecture firms is used in regards to these formal tendencies as demonstrated through the design and making of a series of eleven busts. Featuring works by Andrew Kovacs, Bureau Spectacular, CODA, First Office, MILLIØNS, MOS Architects, Norman Kelley, PARA Project, Pita + Bloom, SO-IL, and WOJR.

OPEN CALL | TURF: A Mini Golf Project

Register & Submit by August 30, 2015

TURF: A Mini-Golf Project explores the meaning of terrain and territory in Los Angeles through the architecture of mini-golf. TURF asks architects, designers and artists to design a single architectural obstacle that investigates a contemporary Los Angeles condition — including topics such as drought and lawns, parking and traffic, nature and neighborhoods, housing typologies and identity — in the form of the miniature and the absurd. Both pleasure and obstacle are par for the course.