Dear DNA friends,

I hope you’re all doing well. Jump ahead for Design Things to Do, including Design Miami.LA and sonically charged ceramics at Adam Silverman’s Common Ground artwork for a less divided world. Before that, a thought on cities.

I am writing to you from Old Europe — not from one of the current hotspots (Venice Biennale! Milan Furniture Fair! Paris on the eve of the Olympics!). Rather, I’m in Bath, England (spring tulips, above), spending time with my mom as she recovers from an injury.

Bath is a small country town, which you may know from Jane Austen novels; or for its ancient spa waters, enjoyed by Celts, Romans, Georgians, and Bathonians today. Mom lives in the town center and has much to say about the changes afoot. Her biggest beef is the closure of many roads for most cars (purportedly for security reasons), which brings me to The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time and Our Planet. 

Infographic from The 15-Minute City. Image by Nicolas Bascop & Michael.

This is a new book, due out in early May, by Carlos Moreno, the Columbian-born, Paris-based roboticist, systems analyst, and urban thinker who argues that humanity needs to override twentieth-century, sprawling, car-based cities with dense, mixed-use, mixed-income communities in which residents can get everything they need within a 15-minute walk, bike or transit ride, or 30 minutes in more spread-out places.

The 15-Minute City has echoes of New Urbanism. It is a unifying theory of city-making that encompasses all the efforts since Jane Jacobs fought the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway to mend the city fabric riven by urban highways and zoning of work, home, and leisure. Such efforts include preserving existing fabric, interventions like bike lanes, pedestrianized streets, and pocket parks, plus community engagement and denser, mass-transit-based living. To these, Moreno has added the urgent imperatives of climate change and the pandemic, which he says woke up the world to new priorities — the desire for fresh air, open space, and social connection — while crushing the daily home-to-work paradigm.

The book explores cities that have embraced the 15-minute philosophy, most visibly Paris, under the forceful leadership of Mayor Anne Hidalgo, as well as Portland, Oregon; Busan, South Korea; Sousse, Tunisia, and several other municipalities. Even in the quintessential car-based region of Los Angeles, his ideas have gained traction and you’ll often hear the 15-minute city invoked in connection with traffic calming and densification schemes. Moreno believes life in these places will be less “masculine,” less speed-obsessed (unlike my mother, who loves driving fast), less polluted, and filled with relaxed people living in “happy proximity.”

Moreno seems to subscribe to the “great man theory” of what ails cities: he ascribes runaway suburbia more to the malign influence of architect Le Corbusier and the American PR Edward Bernays than to its appeal to millions of people burned out on early industrial city life. So a defense of non-proximity has arisen. The British government has decried the 15-minute city concept; a critic wrote that car-free streets would impose an “unprecedented level of control over public space and the daily lives of residents.”

And this is what gets my mom worked up. Leaving aside her speed-freakery, she asks what happens to the seniors who need to get ferried to the hospital, the delivery people getting to the stores, the families herding young children, the tourists with heavy suitcases, and the care workers and teachers who simply cannot afford to live within the neat 15-minute circle. After all, many a pleasant 15-minute city, such as Paris, has lost affordable homes to Airbnb, global investors, or resistance to affordable residential development.

If it were possible to thread this needle, however, 15-minute city living could be lovely. Bath, with its now less trafficked streets, it certainly a pleasant place to walk in. Sorry, mom!

Most cars are unable to enter this city center street in Bath, after 10:00 AM. Photo by Frances Anderton.

For anyone wanting to hear from Moreno directly, he will be sharing his ideas in Los Angeles next Tuesday, May 7th. Unfortunately, it won’t be in a widely accessible space. He will join a line-up of speakers discussing Technology Powering Urban Innovation at the elite Milken Institute Global Conference, aka Davos West. He is one of several hundred speakers who will take on the 2024 topic of "Shaping a Shared Future."

Design Things To Do

Rooms in Bloom
LEGENDS: La Cienega Design Quarter, West Hollywood
Tuesday, May 7th–Thursday, May 9th

All things floral are the theme for this year’s annual LEGENDS, three days of talks and gatherings for LA’s interior and furniture design community. 

The opening party at Sunset Tower Hotel honors the designer Pam Shamshiri, then comes breakfast hosted by Peter Dunham at Hollywood at Home, and a closing party at Ben Soleimani on Thursday, May 9th.

Along the way, check out the annual storefront window displays, and hear from luminaries in the field including Charlotte Cosby, Creative Director of Farrow & Ball (below), who will discuss “painted paper” with House Beautiful’s Editorial Director, Joanna Saltz.

Click here for all the programming, and here to register and purchase tickets.

Farrow & Ball showroom on La Cienega, designed by Project Room

Young Talent!
O-Launch Weekend
Otis College’s Los Angeles Campus
Friday, May 10th, 5:00 PM–10:00 PM; Saturday, May 11th, Noon–6:00 PM.

The Westchester campus for Otis College of Art and Design blossoms into a showcase of student talent next weekend when it unveils its annual exhibition for the work of graduating students from Otis’s BFA and MFA programs: Animation, Environmental Design, Fashion Design, Fine Arts, Game and Entertainment Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Product Design, and Toy Design. 

The optimum time to attend is Friday night at 8:00 PM when you can catch the school's always flashy runway show, modeling the skills of junior and senior fashion students who have been mentored throughout the year by industry experts, this year including Mike Amiri, Revolve, J. Crew, and Katherine Ross/LACMA.  

Click here for details.

What I'm Digging

My Grandma’s Doilies are Not a Joke

This story had me at the title. The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) in Philadelphia managed to inflame the internet with an April Fools’ Day post about their mission to “unearth the forgotten textile relics” from “Meemaw’s Attic.” Elena Kanagy-Loux, a textile historian, asks, “Will art institutions finally pay respect to our foremothers’ artistry?” She reflects on learning to sew, crochet, and embroider from her mother and grandmothers, pointing out that the late artist Faith Ringgold, "who worked closely with the FWM, actively honored the role that her maternal ancestors played in shaping her practice.” Given that I’m spending time with my mom, who also taught me to sew, the story in Hyperallergic art magazine has a special resonance.

Doily crocheted by the author’s grandmother, Adella Kanagy, atop a quilt made by her great-grandmother, Alice Yoder (photo by Ruth Kanagy, courtesy Elena Kanagy-Loux/Hyperallergic).

Cross That Bridge

IMHO the replacement Sixth Street Viaduct, designed by architect Michael Maltzan with HNTB infrastructure design firm, is one of the most exciting new structures to appear in Los Angeles in recent years. But it’s only one of several new Los Angeles bridges worth crossing. Adam Markovitz picks some of the best of old and new crossings in this L.A. Times guide, making the case that LA can hold its own with other cities with some of the best bridges.

Sixth Street Viaduct near completion in 2022. Photo by Frances Anderton.