Hanging Toilets and Happy Families: a Book and a Talk about ADUs
Thursday, March 21st, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM
Tarzana, CA

Ronnie Gor helms her own architecture firm, Amorphous Studio, in Tarzana and has designed and built several ADUs after building her family’s home. This Thursday she'll host ADU Insights: Exploring California’s Housing Landscape, a mixer for people interested in building their own ADU.

Bakman House ADU. Image courtesy Ronnie Gor.

A virtual speaker at Ronnie Gor's ADU meet-up will be Sheri Koones, author of multiple books on small and prefab housing, and now a new book ADUs: The Perfect Housing Solution.

“ADUs are one of the fastest growing trends in residential housing in North America,” she writes. “Every month it seems another municipality is attempting to pass zoning regulations to allow ADUs in their areas or is updating those already in place.”

Her book showcases 25 of her favorite ADUs. Several are in California (by Vertebrae, Patrick Tighe, and Cover Technologies), where they are booming in number, but Koones plucks from all over the country. They meet many purposes, including providing a home for extended family. They are eclectic, ranging from detached, attached, and garage and basement conversions, and in designs from a chic blue A-frame in Sonoma Valley to an off-the-shelf period-style cottage in Atlanta and a converted Tuff Shed in Portland, Oregon.

Koones shows plans and offers all sorts of useful information about maximizing a miniature space, from spiral staircases to heat pumps to wall-hanging toilets! That’s right, hanging toilets, with the plumbing hidden in the wall, adding a vital few square inches of extra space.

Click here for information about the book. 

Click here to sign up and get the address for the meetup at Amorphous Studio.

A-frame ADU in Sonoma Valley, designed by Kerman & Morris Architects. Photo by Jack Hecker.

Full Spectrum: Colour in Contemporary Architecture
Book Release + Symposium
Friday, March 22nd, 5:00 PM
W.M. Keck Lecture Hall

One of the odder aspects of a good deal of contemporary architecture is the apparent fear of color. Many new houses boast endless walls of bleached-out, bare white plaster. Yet, "color is architecture’s sharpest tool in the box,” writes Elena Manferdini and Jasmine Benyamin, the authors of the new book, Full Spectrum: Colour in Contemporary Architecture.

Vibrant hues have played a central role in the history of architecture, and now, say Manferdini and Benyamin, “color has emerged as a powerful mode of working and an impactful political proposition. The second digital age has ushered paradigmatic shifts in how architects engage it.”

What that means exactly is the subject of a symposium this Friday, at SCI-Arc in the Arts District. Hear from Manferdini and Benyamin in conversation with Courtney Coffman, Javier Gonzalez Rivero, Marcelyn Gow, Damjan Jovanovic, Zeina Koreitem, Carolyn Kane, Florencia Pita, Paulette Singley, and Mimi Zeiger.  

Click here for information.

Over the Rainbow, Changsha (China), by 100architects; photo by Rex Zou

The Force is Female
Breaking Ground: The Legacy of Women Landscape Architects
March 22nd - 24th, various times

California living would be nothing without its sublime gardens, and some of the leading designers were women. This year's Preservation Pasadena celebrates them with Breaking Ground: The Legacy of Women Landscape Architects, two days of wine tasting, lectures, and tours devoted to the work of pioneering designers including Katherine Bashford, Beatrix Farrand, Ruth Shellhorn, Florence Yoch, Isabelle Greene, and Lucile Council. 

Attractions include a tour of La Casita del Arroyo, whose garden was co-designed by Isabelle Greene (grandaughter of the architect Henry Greene), where you can hear about the career of Florence Yoch. Yoch created the gardens for the films Gone with the Wind and The Sound of Music. If tix are still available, you can also take a tour with a tipple at a wine-tasting featuring female winemakers.

Click here for details.

La Casita Del Arroyo. Image courtesy La Casita Foundation

The Genius of the Place
Private Film Screening, hosted by L.A. Forum
Tuesday, March 26th,  6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Neutra Office Building, 2379 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90039

Geoffrey Bawa (1919-2003) was Sri Lanka’s most celebrated architect of the 20^th century, known for houses, civic buildings, and hotels that fused Western ideas of architectural modernity with the traditional construction, crafts, and lifestyle of his country.

His work is celebrated in a gentle and lovely film, The Genius of the Place: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Bawa, directed by Afdhel Aziz with cinematography by LA-based photographer Paul Vu of Here And Now Agency. Now the L.A. Forum is hosting a private screening at the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design (NISTD) at the Neutra office in Silver Lake.

The film provides an in-depth look at five of Bawa’s pivotal projects: the architect’s own town and country homes, the Sri Lankan Parliament Building; the Kandalama hotel, a hotel built into the side of a cliff that has become enveloped in tropical greenery; the Ena De Silva house, cooled via a central courtyard and glass-free, wood-screened windows; and a house with no walls that is completely open, even to visiting monkeys.

Following the screening, the architect Ravi GuneWardena will present a short overview of the work of Bawa and conduct a Q&A with the filmmakers Aziz and Vu.

Click here for details.

Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in Any Workspace

The Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design (NISTD) was founded by Richard Neutra and is now run by his son, Raymond, an epidemiologist focused on the connection between public health and the built environment. On Saturday, March 23rd, NISTD will host Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in Any Workspace. 

Click here to sign up.

Kandalama Hotel, designed by Geoffrey Bawa. Still from The Genius of the Place: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Bawa. 

Anna Heringer
Donghia Designer In Residence Lecture and Reception
Thursday, March 28th, Reception 6:30 PM, Lecture 7:30 PM
Otis College Of Art And Design, 9045 Lincoln Blvd, LA, 90045  

Every day brings new reminders of how much we have befouled our global nest with ceaseless consumption of filthy resources, and one of the culprits is building construction. So it is inspiring to see the work of Anna Heringer, an Austrian architect and honorary professor of the UNESCO Chair of Earthen Architecture, Building Cultures, and Sustainable Development who will be the Donghia Designer In Residence at Otis College of Art Design for a week at the end of March.

She and her team have painstakingly crafted schools, community centers, and hostels -- in India, China, Zimbabwe, Ghana, and Austria -- from rammed earth, bamboo, stone, handmade textiles, and color. She infuses them with a profound loveliness.

“Sustainability is a synonym for beauty,” she says. "A building that is harmonious in its design, structure, technique, and use of materials, as well as with the location, the environment, the user, the socio-cultural context. This, for me, is what defines its sustainable and aesthetic value.”

Come hear her speak about her work on March 28th at Otis College at a free, public lecture.

Click here for details.

METI school, Bangladesh, designed by Anna Heringer. Photo by Kurt Hoerbst

ED1: Friend or Foe?
Saturday, March 30th, 10:00 AM
2379 Glendale Boulevard, LA

This recent article in the New York Times explains how Paris, France, manages to provide housing for its lower-income workforce of teachers, sanitation workers, nurses, college students, bakers, butchers, and more. “Our guiding philosophy is that those who produce the riches of the city must have the right to live in it,” Ian Brossat, a past head of housing for the city, told the reporter Thomas Fuller. It is one of a terrific series of articles in the NYT about the housing struggles in powerhouse global cities today.

Here in LA, the housing shortfall, especially for low and very low-income people, is so huge that local and state elected officials have finally gotten serious about expediting more of it. To that end, on her first day in office, Mayor Karen Bass issued Executive Directive 1 or ED1. This would streamline the approval process for 100% affordable housing projects, cutting red tape and community input that could tie projects up in endless review and litigation.

Taken in combination with state density bonuses, ED1 has been a game changer. It has stimulated the permitting of thousands of 100% affordable dwellings, the majority by private developers, obviating the need for taxpayer subsidies. However, as the rubber starts to hit the road, some less positive or unexpected impacts are emerging, having to do with scale, livability, and equity.

We are going to hold a public conversation about what ED1 means for residents, their neighbors, LA’s housing needs in general, and the cityscape at large. It takes place Saturday, March 30th at the Neutra Office in Silver Lake.

It is part of the Awesome and Affordable project I'm working on with FORT: LA and David Kersh. Themes will be established by invited experts Rachel Allen, Greg Goldin, Joshua Gonzales, Eduardo Mendoza, Rochelle Mills, Shane Phillips, Vijay Sehgal, and Andrew Slocum. Please bring your questions and comments for an open discussion about our evolving cityscape.

Click here to sign up.