Move over Marilyn, the Aluminaire House is coming to Palm Springs
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Dear DNA friends,
I hope you’re doing well and safe from the flooding. As I write, the rain is bucketing down and I feel truly fortunate to be in a dry, warm interior.
That brings me back to the topic of housing and who has it and what form it is going to take going forward. This in turn takes me back almost a century to the time when housing the masses was a massive challenge facing many countries shaken to the core by industrialization and world war, and the idealistic designers and planners of the time thought you could harness new technology to make better homes!
You can see a shining example – literally – of that right now in front of Palms Springs Art Museum. There, a radical house co-designed by the Swiss-born, Palms Springs-based Albert Frey, is being reborn for viewing in the near-completion stage during Modernism Week (below) and opening to the public next month.
This 1200 square feet structure was the first all-metal, prefabricated house in America, conceived decades before shipping containers and modular construction became today's trend. Made of prefabricated steel and aluminum, it was designed by Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher for the New York Architectural and Allied Arts Exposition in 1931. The concept, according to Palm Springs Art Museum, "was an experiment to explore new industrial materials and modern design in creating low-cost housing. It represents Frey’s utopian belief that the power of U.S. industry could be used to create affordable housing for everyone."
Over the decades, the home fell into disrepair, and, in 1987, was saved from demolition by two New York architecture professors Michael Schwarting and Frances Campani.
Not everyone was a fan, however. Along the way, there was a plan to place it alongside Sunnyside Gardens Historic District, in Sunnyside, Queens. But residents of the local brick building did not take to this image of living in a tin can, and scuttled the plan, sending the home on its way across the country to Palm Springs. There, it has fallen into the warm embrace of lovers of modernism who have their own unwanted landmarks - the glaring statue of Marilyn in her unmissable underwear.
Mark Davis, a staffer at Modernism Week and founding member of the Palm Springs branch of the Aluminaire House Foundation, took this photo in the rain and tells us that soon “the Aluminaire will be sitting pretty in its new permanent home for all the sunny days ahead.”
You can read more about the revival of the Aluminaire house here. Find more about Frey at the museum's current exhibition, Albert Frey: Inventive Modernist. Former MOMA curator Barry Bergdoll will discuss the house in a keynote here; and so will architect Leo Marmol, Palm Springs Art Museum board trustee here. Read on below for Stories Untold, also at Modernism Week.
The Aluminaire House, under reconstruction in Palm Springs. Photo by Mark Davis
Design Things To Do
Art and AI: Elena Manferdini and Claire Isabel Webb in Conversation Italian Cultural Institute Thursday, February 8th, 6:00 PM 1023 Hilgard Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90024
This Thursday, join me for an encounter with two brilliant women at ease in the world increasingly shaped by AI: SCI-Arc professor Elena Manferdini and Claire Isabel Webb, director of the Future Humans program at the Berggruen Institute.
I’ll moderate a conversation about the implications of invented life, and art, as part of the launch of FLORA, an exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood Village.
“In our current age of digital ephemera and computational imagery, nature appears familiar and at the same time eerily synthetic,” says Manferdini, who is far more sanguine about artificial intelligence than the growing movement of "New Luddites."
An "eerily synthetic" version of Elena Manferdini, courtesy Atelier Manferdini
ADUs Explained Self-driving Tour + ADU Academy Los Angeles, various locations February 10th, 10:00 AM – 2:45 PM
Do you own property and have the itch to build an ADU but are bewildered by what’s involved? There's a lot between laying a sewer line to the costs of the building materials and stylistic choices.
Some of your questions may be answered at the SoCal ADU Tour, a self-driving tour of eight LA area ADUs that are built in converted garages. The organizers are also holding an all-day ADU Academy training at the Veteran’s Memorial Building in Culver City.
This is the first LA outing for the team from ADU Academy, established in Portland a few years back by Kol Peterson, whose company Accessory Dwelling Strategies disseminates ADU-related education, advocacy, and consulting.
Get tickets for the tour here. Information about the ADU Academy here.
Note: if you can't make the tour and want a deep dive into ADUs, small housing expert Sheri Koones has written a new book on the topic, About ADU: The Perfect Housing Solution, coming out next month.
So many houses, so many ADUs... photo courtesy ADU Academy
Safe Spaces Five Car Garage Artist Talk And Walk Through Saturday February 10th, 3:00 PM
I love art in gardens, especially when the garden is a hidden one like that of artist/gallerist Emma Gray on the Westside.
There you can find Strength and Vulnerability, a site-specific installation of ceramics by Galia Linn, sculptor and painter (below). Linn spent much of her young life in Israel, living amidst “relics and ruins of civilizations, from ancient archeological artifacts to the contemporary remains of armed conflicts.” “I am a place-maker,” she says. "My sculptures create sanctuaries that are safe places to tell stories, create rituals, and foster community.”
Meanwhile, indoors, in Gray’s "5 Car Garage" art space, is a show of paintings of bubbling, erupting lava in volcanoes by Senon Williams. Once A Harbor depicts “the beginning, middle, or ending stages of our mercurial landscape,” which may have even more resonance following our recent deluge. Williams says his works are a metaphor for a “known past and the unknown future, safety on an unstable foundation.”
Both artists will give a talk and walk-through of their work this Saturday, at 3:00 PM.
Galia Linn's Strength and Vulnerability. Photo courtesy Emma Gray HQ
Candace Shure Grand Opening - Shure Design Studio Gallery + Retail Space Saturday, February 17, 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM Verdugo Plaza, 3342 Verdugo Road, Suite C, Los Angeles 90065
Candace Shure is an LA native and interior designer mentored by the seasoned Ron Woodson and Jaime Rummerfield, founders of Save Iconic Architecture. Befitting generational shifts yielding new housing choices, her decorating services also include decluttering, downsizing, and small-space design.
Now she is opening her own retail space and gallery in Glassell Park, in the Verdugo Plaza. There you can find a changing display of new and vintage pieces; it currently features pieces by ceramists Amanda Hummes, Kassandra Guzman, and Rory Shamlian; artists Caroline Pinney, Johanna Christensen, Melina Finkelstein, Fernanda Sibilia, and Charmee Celine; and California makers Atelier Saucier (linens), Bohemé and Flamingo Estate (candles) and LuvHaus (tabletop).
Check it out next Saturday at an opening party catered by Lemon Poppy, which you can't miss in the lemon yellow mall, which was given a facelift by Bestor Architecture.
A curated display at Shure Gallery and Retail store; photo by Elizabeth Nielson
Showing the love, with Russell Brown Valentine's Day, Venice Canals, and CAMP Hyatt Palm Springs, 285 N Palm Canyon Drive Sunday, February 18th, 9:00 AM - 10:00 PM
Share your love for your partner or simply for LA architecture, by taking FORT's Valentine's Stroll through Venice Canals. FORT: LA, founded by Russell Brown, is offering DnA newsletter readers a discount: put in promo code KCRWDNA for 50 Percent Off, good through Valentine’s Day.
For the Love of Art LA Art Show Los Angeles Convention Center February 14-18
The art season is starting, with Frieze at the end of the month and the LA Art Show kicking things off with an Opening Night Premiere Party on Valentine’s Day.
The show’s producer and director Kassandra Voyagis promises to reflect the global energy around art with a “spectacular international exhibitor lineup” from countries including the Philippines, Italy, Israel, Peru, and South Korea.
And they’ve extended a special welcome to KCRW Members – who know their LA artists!
Respond to this email (newsletters@kcrw.org) with your favorite LA-based artist. The first KCRW member to respond will receive a VIP invitation via email. Not a KCRW member?Join today so you never miss out on exclusive invites like these.
Larry Kagan/Thomas Paul Fine Art
Stories Untold: Forging Connections with the Past Through Design Annenberg Theater, Palm Springs Art Museum 101 N Museum Dr Palm Springs, CA 92262 Monday, February 19; 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
There is an abundance of activities marking Black History Month, but one that is worth getting on the road for is the President’s Day symposium at Modernism Week. This event explores the design-thinking behind buildings and venues devoted to African American history and narratives at the recently opened International African American Museum (IAAM) in Charleston, SC, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, and Destination Crenshaw in the Crenshaw community of Los Angeles, CA.
A stellar line-up features Walter Hood, renowned landscape designer, MacArthur 'Genius Grant' Fellow, and designer of IAAM's African Ancestors Memorial Garden; Dr. Tonya Matthews, President, and CEO of IAAM, LA’s very own Gabrielle Bullock, Director of Global Diversity at the international architectural design firm, Perkins&Will, which co-designed the Smithsonian Museum, and Jason W. Foster, the President and COO of Destination Crenshaw.
Expect Matthews and Hood to share his creative vision behind the IAAM's African Ancestors Memorial Garden at the historically sacred site where approximately 40 percent of enslaved Africans entered the United States. Learn from Bullock about the narratives and design strategies at The Smithsonian Museum. Her firm is part of the team at Destination Crenshaw, the 1.3-mile art park that promises to be one of the most exciting interventions in the LA cityscape, scheduled to open this year. Bullock and Foster will give us the inside story of design and art.
Following presentations from the speakers, I’ll moderate a conversation with them all. Find tickets and information here.
IAAM, designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners with Moody Nolan; Charleston, South Carolina. Image courtesy IAAM
Introducing Indigenous Architecture Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) Tuesday, February 20, 2024 12:00 – 1:30 PM CST Hosted on Zoom
How many of us could describe America’s “indigenous architecture?” I know I’d love to know more about it, especially its interrelationship with the land and local materials and climate. So the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) is helping spread the word with an upcoming webinar, Introducing Indigenous Architecture. This is the inaugural public event for the SAH’s Indigenous Architecture Affiliate Group.
An Elders’ Council of five leading design practitioners and scholars will press for more representation “in architectural discourse and education” about their field, which “encompasses traditional forms of Indigenous architecture (pre-colonial to present), colonial architecture affiliated or concerned with Indigenous communities (such as BIA boarding schools or HUD housing), and recent Indigenous architecture (designed in collaboration with Indigenous communities and/or designed by Indigenous architects).”
Vengeful wives are in, whether it’s the poor little rich girls of the Upper East Side whose miserable marriages are exposed by Truman Capote in Feud: Capote vs. the Swans on FX, or the tough little poor girls of Medellín, Colombia, and Miami, who turn the tables on the macho drug trafficking world in the Netflix series Griselda. Both come with fabulous period decor and dresses and a great deal of smoking. The latter, with Sofia Vergara at her most va-va-voom, is more fun, maybe because she and her team of women are so gutsy, though one has to remind oneself not to be too seduced by the feminist revenge narrative. The real-life Griselda Blanco terrified even other drug kingpins, put away three husbands, and, per the DEA in this article, “loved killings. Bodies lined the streets of Miami as a result of her feuds.”
Sofia Vergara as Griselda Blanco. Photo courtesy Netflix
Men in Suits
I have to confess my binge-watching favorite during the recent downpour is Suits, last year’s most popular stream on Netflix. This legal show comes with a script as snappy as the finely tailored attorneys. Watching Meghan Markle, before she met the man who wears suits fit for royalty, is of course icing on the cake.
One of the running gags in Suits is the entitlement of Harvard-educated lawyers. But even Ivy Leaguers have problems too, at least according to the film Holdovers. Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, and Dominic Sessa play, respectively, a disciplinarian teacher, a bereaved cook, and a rich but neglected teen boy who are thrown together for the holidays at an East Coast prep school and muddle their way into companionship and personal growth. Very moving.
Patrick J. Adams (Mike) and Gabriel Macht (Harvey) in Suits. Image courtesy Universal Content Productions
Happy New Year, Emperor’s College
Ever since my primary care physician sent me to Emperor’s College, the 40-year-old acupuncture training and treatment center, for help with a searing frozen shoulder, I’ve been a fan of the gentle pain relief offered by the ancient Chinese form of healing that involves inserting needles – often mysteriously far from where it hurts – to stimulate chi, or energy flow. Now Emperor’s College has left its home in Santa Monica for a new one in Culver City, in an office park that happens to have a rock garden and bubbling pools, adding to the soothing experience. The first treatment is complimentary through March. Happy Year of the Dragon, Emperor’s College!
A waterfall provides a sense of peace outside the new home of Emperor's College. Image courtesy Emperor's College
As always, thank you so much for reading this newsletter. Hope to see you at some of the design events around town.
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An "eerily synthetic" version of Elena Manferdini, courtesy Atelier Manferdini
So many houses, so many ADUs... photo courtesy ADU Academy
Galia Linn's Strength and Vulnerability. Photo courtesy Emma Gray HQ
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