Dear DnA readers,

I hope you’re doing well in this challenging week, amidst a challenging year for the City of Angels. Jump ahead to plentiful Design Things to Do, or stay for this brief reflection on connectivity in LA.

Of the many things to digest regarding the ICE raids, for me, the weirdest part is the background role of the school our daughter attended: Santa Monica High School. Stephen Miller, architect of the president's immigration policies, cut his teeth at Samohi. There he infamously encouraged fellow students to leave their litter on the floor for janitors to pick up, raged against bilingual teaching and multicultural picnics, and dropped his middle school friend and fellow Star Trek fan Jason Islas, on account of being "Latino."

Crowds attend the opening of LAX/Metro Transit Center, featuring an artwork overhead by Glenn Kaino. Photo by Frances Anderton

The opposite of such divisiveness was on display last Friday at the grand opening of the LAX/Metro Transit Center. A galaxy of elected officials and performers descended on the long, lean, gray concrete and silver steel piece of infrastructure at Aviation Blvd./96th St. Designed by Grimshaw with Gruen Associates, it will connect flyers to two light rail lines (the C and K lines), several bus lines including Beach Cities, Big Blue Bus, and Culver City Bus, and, next year, to an Automated People Mover that will glide directly to the terminals.

Now, instead of stewing over the time and costs taken to complete the building, a journey explained by India Mandelkern, Angelenos could celebrate finally achieving the obvious — a transit connection to the airport — and catching up with other global cities while connecting with each other.

Connectivity — workers to jobs, people to other communities — was the word of the day in speech after speech. Such soaring rhetoric about a train station might puzzle people in cities where mass transit is the norm. But it hasn't been the norm in LA. Transit riders were long used to second-class status, slow or no connections, and shadeless stops.

The new building doesn't have the zest of LAX's jet-age Theme Building, it doesn't have the shops and cafes that add buzz to most global transit hubs, but it does have gravitas, expansiveness, and, with many openings to the outside, airiness. Hubby called it a "spinal column to give LA more civic structure." It even elicited poetry, in an alliterative blessing given by Bishop Francine Brookins; a few lines are excerpted here:

Here, beneath the bold beams of the LAX Metro Transit Center, we celebrate the careful collaboration and creative courage that crafted this cornerstone of connection.

Bless the brilliant minds and busy hands — the designers, the dreamers, and the doers who dared to draw together rails, roads, and roots — weaving a welcoming web for all wanderers.

May their vision and vigor echo in every arrival and every embrace beneath this roof.

Let this station stand as a symbol of safe passage and shared purpose.

May its shining structure shelter the student, the seeker, the sojourner, and especially the scared, those shadowed by fear, fleeing from ICE raids and the dangers that darken our days....

Yes, bless the designers, the dreamers, and the scared.

The view down to the platforms for the C and K Lines. Photo by Frances Anderton

Design Things To Do

$3 Bill: Evidence of Queer Lives
June 10th–September 28th
Getty Research Institute, Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles 

Nothing says acceptance in American society like having a naval ship named in your memory, such as the USNS Harvey Milk, honoring the assassinated San Francisco Supervisor, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.

Now, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth proposes renaming that vessel to rebuke Pride Month. So it's timely and meaningful that a show two years in the making should take its title from the fictitious three-dollar banknote distributed during Gay Pride in San Francisco in 1981, bearing the portraits of Bessie Smith and Harvey Milk.

$3 Bill: Evidence of Queer Lives just opened at The Getty Research Institute, exploring “queer representation through art, ephemera, videos, and archival materials dating from 1900 to the present day.”

The wide-ranging show encompasses images of Harlem drag balls from the 1940s and 1950s; artists’ books, prints, drawings and photographs by artists including Jean Cocteau, Jean Genet, Elisar von Kupffer, Marie Laurencin, David Hockney, and Emile Cadoo; a section on the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles, "artworks exploring the impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis on queer communities," and much more.

The show joins one curated by Paul Martineau, Queer Lens: A History of Photography,  featuring more than 280 photographs from the early 19th century to the present. 

Click here for details.

Front Line of Freedom San Francisco: Queer as a Three Dollar Bill, ca. 1918, Ken Wood

Design For Dignity
Friday, June 13th and Friday, June 20th, 7:30 AM–12:30 PM
AIA/LA's Center for Communities, 4450 West Adams Blvd. LA, CA 90016

Ten years ago, Will Wright, the Director Of Government And Public Affairs for the LA chapter of the American Institutes of Architects, recognized that housing was becoming LA's most pressing issue, and that architects had a role to play, not only in designing high quality affordable homes, but also engaging with policy measures aimed at increasing production of housing.

 

He launched Design For Dignity, a conference bringing together designers and policymakers. This Friday morning and the next one, they will gather again for a tenth outing, From Ashes to Equity – Building Resilient and Just Communities With Innovative Housing Solutions, to hear from a line-up of experts who will "confront the intertwined crises of housing affordability, social inequity, and climate-driven disasters in Los Angeles."  

 

Speakers include Mayor Karen Bass; Dana Cuff, Director, cityLAB – UCLA (see Small Lots, Big Impacts, below); Connor Lock, Deputy Mayor of Housing, City of Long Beach; Steven Lewis, FAIA, NOMAC - Principal, ZGF Architects, and many more. I will moderate a conversation this Friday mid-morning with housing leaders working in LA and Long Beach, about "Forging Pathways to Proactive Solutions."

 

Click here for information and tickets.

Design For Dignity, 2024. Photo by Frances Anderton.

Are You My Type?
The International Printing Museum
Saturday, June 14th, 2:00 PM–5:00 PM 
315 W Torrance Boulevard, Carson, CA 90745, United States

Clackety-clack, clickety clack. If you can’t resist the sound and feel of typing, come to the “TYPE IN” this Saturday to celebrate National Typewriter Day, at The International Printing Museum in Torrance.

Feast your eyes and digits on vintage and unusual typewriters, type an original haiku, win prizes, and shop for your own typewriter and related merch, including typo-o-grams, retro treasures, and fully working typewriters for sale.

Click here for information about this and many other events at The International Printing Museum.

Hubby Robin Bennett Stein experiences the joy of typing. Photo by Frances Anderton.

 

Small Lots, Big Impacts: Design Competition Celebration
Tuesday, June 17th, 5:30–8:30 PM
AIA/LA's Center for Communities, 4450 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90016

A few weeks back, cityLAB-UCLA, the City of Los Angeles, and LA4LA launched Small Lots, Big Impacts, a design competition for high-quality, buildable solutions for low-density housing complexes, for sale or rent at attainable prices.

 

Unlike other design competitions aimed at finding innovative solutions to housing the "missing middle" at a "gentle density," this was not simply an ideas competition. Winners would then apply for small, underutilized parcels owned by the City of Los Angeles and work with boutique and mom-and-pop architect-developer teams to construct their housing prototypes.

Small Lots, Big Impact garnered 350 submissions from 36 countries, and winning teams came from far and wide. IMHO, it was largely the local teams — such as Spinagu, West of West, and Studio One Eleven — whose designs advanced LA's legacy of low-rise multifamily housing centered on indoor-outdoor living and shared, intimate courtyards and pathways. You can see the winners here. Or come see an exhibition of the schemes and meet some of the designers and competition organizers at a celebration taking place at AIA/LA's Center for Communities in West Adams.

Click here to register for this free event. Read more coverage here. 

Households, a winning design by Spinagu (Courtesy cityLAB-UCLA) 

 

Press Print, Build House
VISUAL WORLD, with Victoria Lautman
Saturday, June 21st, 11:00 AM
In-person or Zoom, Neutra Office Building, 2379 Glendale Boulevard in Silver Lake

Among the many ideas for materials and fabrication of tomorrow's homes, 3D printing gets a lot of buzz (and was applied in a number of installations at the Venice Biennale, as in the image below). But what does this really mean? What part of a building is “printed?” How applicable is this to post-fire rebuilding?

Get the answers to these questions and more when design connoisseur Victoria Lautman discusses Press Print, Build House: 3D-Printed Homes Revolution, with guests Dr. Babak Zareiyan, founder of the Additive Construction Company, maker of a 3D concrete printed structure in California; and Gene Eidelman, co-founder of Gardena-based Azure Printed Homes, made of recycled plastic and fiberglass.

It’s at VISUAL WORLD, hosted by the Society of Architectural Historians at the historic Neutra Office Building in Silver Lake.

Click here for information and tickets.

Living sand lattices were “printed” in Picoplanktonics, an installation at the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.  Photo by Frances Anderton.

LA Design Festival (LADF)
Thursday June 26th–Sunday, June 29th
ROW DTLA; Helms Design District, Culver City; Downtown Long Beach; ArtCenter, Pasadena

Founded in 2011, the Los Angeles Design Festival is a four-day forum for design aficionados, who can pick from a packed schedule of conversations, design showcases, performances, and platforms for "creative exploration, cultural exchange, and design as a tool for transformation."

Under the creative direction of Erika Abrams, this year's edition takes place in late June in four locations: ROW DTLA; Helms Design District, Culver City; Downtown Long Beach; ArtCenter, Pasadena. Events and presentations are arranged under the umbrella theme of Design Futurism, in four evocatively named thematic tracks:

— L.A. Forever: examining design's role in shaping a resilient, sustainable Los Angeles post-wildfires. 

— Revenge of Analog: celebrating the resurgence of analog media, craftsmanship, and tactile design in a digital era.

— The Ancestors Have Answers: champions the enduring power of the physical, the imperfect, and the handmade, in a time dominated by the virtual and the hyper-optimized.

— We Can See The Future: futures thinking, worldbuilding, and design as a tool for justice, foresight, and adaptation.

I'll be based at Helms Design Center on Friday (for a FORT: LA screening and panel) and Saturday (for an afternoon of fast-paced talks about post-fire rebuilding and visioning, curated by Lance Collins). More details about the full fest in the next newsletter.

Click here for information.

Image courtesy LA Design Festival

What I'm Digging

Pride in FORT!

I was stoked to see, sitting between RuPaul and Ryan Murphy on Modern Luxury's LGBTQ+ Power List, the name Russell Brown, and the nonprofit he founded, Friends of Residential Treasures Los Angeles (FORT: LA). In six short years, FORT has become a hub of public education and activities focused on LA's residential legacy, propelled largely by Brown's energy and force of personality. FORT creates self-guided Trails of houses (from architectural classics to pop culture delights like Lifestyles of the Rich and Murderous: The Mansions, Complexes and Estates of Columbo), gatherings including the tasty A Seat at the Table: Dining and Deliciousness in 1960s Gay Literary Los Angeles, and civic initiatives like the brilliant Every School Has a House, mapping the nearest historic residential treasure for every school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Full disclosure: I collaborate frequently with FORT, but I can objectively say that Brown deserves his place alongside America's most famous drag queen.

Image courtesy FORT: LA

Go Etan!

Many people set themselves challenges. Not all of them produce a helpful survey for other people to take advantage of. That's been the outcome of Etan Rosenbloom's ambitious goal of visiting 600 LA landmarks on the National Register of Historic Places. As he reports in the LA Times, so far he has visited 174 of them, often with his daughter in tow. He selected ten for the Times that are "well worth visiting, all for very different reasons," from the Lummis Home (El Alisal) to the La Laguna de San Gabriel, "a fantastical wonderland of 14 concrete sea creatures, populating an ocean of sand." Follow Etan's "quixotic project" at his "Etan Does LA" blog and Instagram account.

La Laguna de San Gabriel, Vincent Lugo Park, San Gabriel  Image courtesy Etan Rosenbloom.

Dreaming Cats and Dogs

Do you watch your pet happily snoozing and wonder if it dreams? Yes! Discover magazine finds that barking, whining, and horizontal "coordinated running movements" might indicate that dogs are dreaming of chasing sticks, food, or you. Your elusive cat may even be mentally "stalking small animals and pouncing on them" while in a doze. So sweet.

Twinkle, asleep, maybe dreaming of catching a critter. Photo by Robin Bennett Stein.