Dear DNA friends,

I hope you’re doing well and had a very restful holiday.

For my part, I got Covid and spent much of the break sleeping and hoping that the scary brain fog would pass. I am very grateful that it seems to have done so and am happy to be back sharing Design Things To Do with you.

During this time we also lost a force: on December 22, the station's former general manager, Ruth Seymour, left us at age 88.

You’ve probably already read many obituaries, so I’ll just add a short tribute. Among numerous broadcasts, Ruth created Which Way LA? and To The Point, the two shows I had the good fortune to work on as a producer for Warren Olney. Then, in 2002, she launched DnA: Design and Architecture.

Up to that point, she had felt design and architecture did not lend themselves to a radio show. Then came the choice of the provocative Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas, to redesign LACMA, and his plan to tear down most of the museum.

Ruth loved nothing more than a good conflict and decided we needed to debate it on Politics of Culture. Knowing I was interested in design, she ordered me to be the host. Having had zero experience on air, I was utterly terrified. To this day, all I can remember is being a kind of verbal goalie trying to catch and make sense of comments as they flew past me by guests including LACMA’s then-president, Andrea Rich, and art critic, Edward Goldman, who made mincemeat of the Koolhaas demolition plan by asking how bird poop would be cleaned off the architect's proposed replacement building with a transparent roof. Koolhaas, incidentally, wound up losing the commission, which later went to Peter Zumthor who had the same idea about getting rid of much of LACMA.

Putting a newbie live on air was typical of Ruth. She would take bets on people and broadcast concepts on pure instinct. And it didn’t always go well. She let me sink until I swam. This meant that periodically Ruth would beckon me into her office, sit me down — on an unnervingly sweet, soft yellow sofa, that was lower than her chair so she loomed over — and give me an eviscerating dressing down about the mistakes I was making. It was tough love and I always learned from it.

Ruth was amazing in many ways including some of her presumptions. When DnA started, I recollect her telling me to avoid words and themes like “urbanism”, “community”, and “planning”, because these were boring. As it turns out, in the intervening years, these very topics came to dominate design thinking, and I see a growing generation of architects who are as interested in these issues as formal experimentation. Of course, Ruth would stay abreast of trends so she would be right on top of this, and would demand programming that told stories in the most interesting way.

To have spent time in her orbit was an amazing gift. RIP Ruth Seymour (February 17, 1935 – December 22, 2023).

Speaking of stories told interestingly, for the last five years I’ve had the good fortune to periodically join KCRW host Steve Chiotakis on air on his show Greater LA. Steve “connects you to the people and places of Southern California” with a cheer and enthusiasm that is infectious. Our last expedition together was this daredevil tour of perilous stilt houses. Sadly, that broadcast comes to an end this week. You will doubtless hear Steve back on air soon though. In the meantime, thank you Steve and everyone on the production team for illuminating our region with such spirit.

Design Things To Do

What I'm Digging

Out of this World

Over the holidays I watched A Murder at the End of the World, created for FX by Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling, who also stars, along with Emma Corrin, who I last saw playing a coquettish Lady Di in The Crown. I loved this eerie and gripping story about a hacker on the hunt for a serial killer who finds herself on a new hunt in a shiver-inducing, atmospheric outpost in Iceland. Some people I know predicted the twist, but I didn’t, and I highly recommend this series that is part love story, part meditation on climate disaster, AI, and the hubris of Tech billionaires, set within marvelous production design by Alex DiGerlando.

Interior of Icelandic hotel in A Murder at the End of the World; photo by Chris Saunders/FX

Ancient Elements of Cool

The counter to the dystopian future portrayed in A Murder at the End of the World comes from a story about pre-tech solutions for livability. It has to do with a topic about which - forgive me -- I’ve held forth before: air conditioning, which is essential in some situations, but is also an over-used source of over-processed, sometimes-toxic, and often too-cold air that is a huge energy suck. Luckily, we have WaPo architecture critic, Philip Kennicott, on a mission to enlighten us. First, he released this brilliant article explaining how the invention of AC upended vernacular building traditions, literally reshaping our world. Over the holiday, he published this report on his travels to find out how buildings in the hottest places in the world stay cool. He writes eloquently and minutely about the ancient design features that not only bring about dramatic drops in temperature but do so in a profoundly sensory way.