I hope you are doing well.

As you know (perhaps from reading my last newsletter!), Metro’s D line has  extended west with the opening of three more subway stations. Meanwhile, the state is pushing California cities to put more housing close to bus and rail, with the upzoning bill, SB 79, taking effect on July 1st. If you want to see what mass transit-oriented living can look like, stop by the Vermont/Santa Monica Red Line Station and check out the new Santa Monica Vermont Apartments (photo above, by Paul Vu).

A playful outdoor area. Photo by Frances Anderton.

A big crowd turned out last month for the ribbon-cutting for this 100% affordable, 187-unit complex built by the nonprofit developer Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC) in partnership with Metro. It was designed by KoningEizenberg Architecture with design flair and optimum resident comfort in mind.

The building features a cascade of landscaped open space, outdoor stairs, bridges, and deep balconies, providing numerous opportunities for neighborly encounters, as well as a visual connection to the public life on the subway’s plaza below. Breaks in the giant volume keep the sun and air and views flowing, also reducing what could have been a view-blocking mass for passersby. Then of course there is the unmissable pink, green, orange, and yellow exterior decor. All of this softens and adds fanciful delight to a building type that is so often resisted, and at its worst can be formulaic and drab.

View between buildings at Santa Monica Vermont Apartments. Photo by Paul Vu.

Santa Monica Vermont Apartments has bounced into life like a spring bloom following a very long winter. The project took forever, starting — believe it or not — in 1985 when the Vermont/Santa Monica Station was first announced, and culminating last year in the resident move-in (the formal ribbon-cutting was delayed).

The sheer struggle to get it built was evidenced in the lineup of elected officials, bankers, residents and nonprofit developers — 13 in all — who gave speeches at the celebration. One participant, however, did not get to share their story, and that was the architect. Designers often get scant acknowledgement at ribbon-cuttings, but it was especially noticeable at this one, given how central the design is to modelling attractive low-income housing, and future living by the train. Besides which, how could speakers not give props to their candy colored backdrop?! So, again, the building was designed by KoningEizenberg, with lush landscaping by RELM Studio.

KEA's Rayne Laborde Ruiz models the spirit of the building. Photo by Frances Anderton.

You can see more on KEA and other affordable housing designers in this just-published story Housing For All story I wrote for BuildingGreen.

Show The Love and Protect What You Trust
When I went to the ribbon-cutting for Santa Monica Vermont Apartments, I told organizers I'd be sharing it with you, the readers of this newsletter. They were delighted. So if you like to read about projects like this one, and trust this coverage, be sure to protect the news sources you trust and support KCRW. The station is rooted in our community and its design and architecture, music, food, happenings, problems, policies, and so much more. Show your love by donating here.

Residents at Santa Monica Apartments have access to plentiful greenery. Photo by Frances Anderton 

Design Things To Do

Top Pick: Inventing America

Superheroes are so central to American culture that we now boast of our own "superpowers," and director Christopher Nolan helps explain his soon-to-be-released adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek The Odyssey by equating it to comic book franchises, telling Variety that Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus et al were "the ‘Original Superheroes’ and Homer was the ‘Marvel of Its Day’."

So, in honor of the nation's forthcoming 250th birthday, the Skirball Cultural Center is hosting Inventing America: The Comic Book Revolution, an exhibition of imagery from Superman, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and more, by artists including the legendary Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Jerry Siegel, and Joe Shuster.

The timing makes sense, in hubby Robin Bennett Stein's view, because comic book creators "are the Founding Fathers of our culture for the past almost 100 years. They spoke to hope, amidst the Depression and the rise of fascism. They spoke, and speak to, ideals of heroism, ideals of justice and democracy, ideals of decency and chivalry."

The show opens on May 20th along with another fun-sounding exhibition: Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976–86.

Image courtesy Skirball Cultural Center

Quick Picks

The 27-unit, fully affordable Sunnyside Apartments, designed by Lehrer Architects for Holos Communities, makes a “quiet but powerful case that dignified, community-centered design is not a luxury,” says LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, which will host a tour of the structure this Saturday, May 16th, at 11:00 AM. See how Lehrer centers light, openness, and bold design in this slender multifamily building on a onetime single-family lot. There are a few tix left for students and LA Forum members.  

Sunnyside Apartments. Image courtesy Michael Lehrer

Miles Davis had an extraordinary ability to continually “absorb and redefine the new — not only in music, but in fashion, performance, and cultural identity,” says Musichead Gallery, at 7420 W. Sunset Blvd. The venue is hosting Miles Davis: A Century of Cool, a retrospective of images taken by 20 photographers across six decades of Davis’s career. It opens on Saturday, May 16th (through June 13th) with an opening reception at 6:00–8:00 PM.

Image courtesy Musichead Gallery

How do you reinterpret Gilded Age glamor to meet today’s luxury tastes? See how at the 61st annual Pasadena Showcase House, concluding this Sunday, May 17th. Some 30 interior and landscape designers, including Ronnie Gor/Amorphous Studio, have overlaid their visions on the rooms and gardens of the historic 1907 Baldwin Oaks Estate in Arcadia, once home of the heiress Clara Baldwin Stocker. Gor says that in the Primary Suite, she referenced the verdant green and bird life outdoors, and layered "gold and glass to reflect Baldwin’s famed affinity for diamonds."

Image courtesy Amorphous Studio

Three leading designers — Barbara Bestor, Leo Marmol, and Pamela Shamshiri — and I will mark the centennial of the city's lovely library building with 100 Years of Architecture in Los Angeles, a conversation about LA’s eclectic “landscape of architectural experimentation," hosted by Aloud and the Library Foundation at the Mark Taper Auditorium at the L.A. Central Library. Tickets are sold out, but the show will be livestreamed.

Note: Central Library itself is the subject of two books coming soon from Angel City Press at Los Angeles Public Library. Below is the cover of L is for Librarian: The ABCs of Los Angeles Central Library, illustrated by Alexander Vidal.

Image courtesy Angel City Press at Los Angeles Public Library

The restaurants and bars of LA “provide 'third spaces' for people to gather and crucial sources of employment,” says Westside Urban Forum (WUF), but it is increasingly hard for them to stay in business. On Thursday, May 21st, WUF will host Closing Time: The Precarious Existence of Bars and Restaurants in LA, a breakfast panel at Helms Design Center, with experts exploring “the economic and policy challenges facing restaurants, bars, and the property owners who host them."

Image courtesy Bowers Museum

Since quilting is as American as apple pie, how better to mark America’s upcoming 250th birthday than with a visit to The American Quilt: Cloth and Commerce, a show opening on May 23rd (through August 30th, 2026) at Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. Over 40 quilts and coverlets will reveal “how the materials, dyes, and techniques used in quiltmaking reflect centuries of economic shifts and technological innovation.”

What I'm Digging

Laughing... at Matt Damon as the fast-talking auctioneer in a spat with his equally fast-talking auctioneer wife (a stellar Sarah Sherman), and as the substitute teacher grooving his goodbye before a roomful of unimpressed students, both skits on the most recent SNL. In all the years Damon has been in our lives, I had no idea he could be so funny, and bust a move!

Still from The Crumbling Marriage of Two Auctioneers (SNL)

Reading… L.A. Material, not a survey of building materials, but a bright new news and culture publication recently co-founded by Julia Wick, L.A. Times alum, and Julia Turner, former editor-in-chief at Slate, with a team of journalists. In its short seven-week life, Wick already scored with her uncovering of a passage tucked into the 524-page Mayoral budget that would give short-term rentals — read, Airbnb — the opportunity to “assist the city” by pre-paying Transient Occupancy Taxes. This ruse relates to the company’s ongoing, and divisive, efforts to get the city to loosen regulations on STRs (on the docket for the Planning & Land Use Management Committee, or PLUM, meeting on Tuesday, May 12th). Expect LAM to report on that, and keep reading for stories ranging from the political to the existential questions we want answered, like Why Is the Escalator at the AMC Burbank 16 Always Broken?

The pesky broken escalator at AMC Burbank. Image: Hayes Davenport/L.A. Material 

What I'm NOT Digging

Losing the Soul of LA

Hubby routinely complains about the demise over the last few years, in our Santa Monica/Venice area neighborhood, of inventive Halloween front yard displays and yard sales filled with quirky stuff. He sees this as evidence of the exodus of the movie set and costume designers, and other production creatives who have long added the fairy dust to L.A. life and the cityscape. So it is sad to read this LA Times article about the costume and prop companies that are still closing at a clip. Let us hope that recent state tax breaks and easing of red tape, or perhaps optimists like Tima Bell, featured in this recent newsletter, can turn the ship around. After all, following a bureaucratic snafu in Venice, Baywatch is back and being filmed on our beaches!

Baywatch is back! Image courtesy TV Insider

Well, that's it for this week's newsletter. Please send your design news, questions, and comments to francesanderton@gmail.com. Get back issues here. And remind your friends to sign up for the newsletter here.

Yours with very best wishes,

Frances