Dear DnA readers,

I hope you’re doing well. My spirits were raised recently on seeing two new buildings with a transformative effect on their surroundings. 

First, Isla Intersections officially opened at a ribbon-cutting on June 15th. This is the complex of 53 dwellings built by Holos Communities for formally unhoused people, built on a piece of surplus, city-owned land right by the intersection of the 110 and 105 freeways. 

As we wrote in a longer description for FORT: LA's Awesome and Affordable: Great Housing Now!, in an ideal world, nobody should be living by massive freeway intersections, but in the real world some people have to because so few sites in pleasant residential areas are available or even permissible for apartment construction. To speed up the production of homes, the city has given “surplus” sites to affordable housing developers. So Holos Communities, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, the landscape architect Agency Artifact, funders, and supporters at the council district and the city, took a lemon-of-a-site and made some great lemonade. 

Mayor Karen Bass, Cristian Ahumada, and Councilman Marqueece Harris Dawson check out the roof terrace community garden at Isla Intersections. Photo by Gabor Ekecs.

Isla Intersections consists of a building made out of stacked, white shipping containers, arranged at angles to keep the freeway roar at bay, and surrounding an open courtyard. Planters are on the roof terraces. Alongside the building’s triangular site, the team created the Annenberg Paseo, supported by Wallis Annenberg. A wide street with shops has been narrowed and curved and landscaped with pollutant-absorbing trees to create a pedestrian-friendly pocket (see photo at top of page).

There are many aspects of this project worth discussing, but one is the perceptible impact the design already has had on its arid, polluted location. The growing, newly planted trees and vegetables have already brought back birdsong. Walk into the courtyard, which is softly sunlit and ventilated through breaks between the stacks of containers, and you feel a perceptible drop in air temperature. The building is excitingly contemporary but deploys traditional methods of passive cooling: tree canopy, cross-ventilation, and shade.

Visitors walk through the courtyard at Isla Intersections. Photo by Frances Anderton.

It’s so important not to forget about these tools as we confront heat domes and the need for cooling centers to help people in the intense heat. Bring on the cooling centers, but let us also plant trees and situate buildings in a way that reduces the temperature with beauty and without switching on the electricity. No wonder the residents of Whittier went to the mat to stop the tearing down of a row of 83 Ficus trees, never mind their pesky roots.

After Isla Intersections, I went back to my own neighborhood where another building was recently completed, coincidentally also designed by LOHA, and also on a highly trafficked thoroughfare — Lincoln Boulevard. The Wilson, two and three stories of market-rate apartments over commerce, are arranged in a blue and white grid and the footprint is angled to make room for a widened sidewalk. Trees have been planted, and cafe tables, chairs, and bright sun-gold umbrellas have appeared, in front of a just-opened Tartine bakery. The street-facing business, the buzz of human life above it, the new greenery, and the sunshades have transformed this stretch of uninviting space. 

Both projects bear witness to human ingenuity, improved by coexistence with nature's excellent design.

The Wilson and Tartine, newly opened on Lincoln Boulevard. Photo by Frances Anderton.

Design Things To Do

Love Local!
Friday, June 28th, 1:00 PM–6:00 PM
Helms Bakery District, Culver City

Somehow I missed the great generational sock war between Millennials and Gen Z. And so did Rock n Sock, purveyors of cheery socks both ankle and crew combined with records that appeal to — quel horreur! — boomers. This vendor couple — "he sells the rock and she sells the socks” — is just one of the 20 vendors and activations at Love Local Makers Market, a pop-up of "design-driven artisans and makers,” taking place this Friday afternoon at Helms Bakery District and on nearby Washington Boulevard.

Other talent includes Pocket Square Clothing, below, makers of locally made ties, pocket squares, bow ties, and clothing, for a self-described “entity of Creatives, Musicians, Designers, Artists and Talented Gentlemen, who care about the way we look." Also, opening its doors at its first-ever retail space on Washington Boulevard, Parks Project, maker of tees, socks (more socks!), jogging wear, camping gear, accessories, and footwear like their Merrell Moab 3 trainers made with "regenerative mushroom leather." The B Corp Certified company also advocates for, and donates to, America's national parks.

The marketplace is presented by Culver City and Helms Bakery District and wraps with a Happy Hour at the newly opened Austrian restaurant, Lustig.

Click here for details.

Pocket Square Clothing doesn't flinch from color and florals.

We Carry The Land
Sat Jun 29th, 12:00 PM–3:00 PM                                                                                    Craft Contemporary, 5814 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036, USA

However accurate maps may seem, they are highly political and biased, writes mapmaker John Wyatt. For example, "European and American mapmakers have a long tradition of writing Indigenous peoples off of maps, incorrectly showing vacant spaces that encouraged settler expansion."

The maps of Indigenous peoples of course contained another narrative, and this Saturday Materials & Applications (M&A), Miriam Diddy of the Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning, and Design, and artist River Garza will lead a conversation and workshop, entitled We Carry the Land: Reorienting Ancestor Geography & Mapping Indigenous Futurity.

"Throughout history, many Indigenous mapmakers drew both space and knowledge across time," explains the museum. "They mapped connections across land to relatives utilizing community and ancestral thinking as planning principles to design... In this workshop, participants will create maps using stencils, spray paint, and other objects using their own language, memories, experiences, and dreams, with the goal of "understanding foundational planning principles of seven-generation design" and fostering "holistic worldviews in practices today." 

The conversation complements the current courtyard installation We Carry The Land, designed by six emerging Native architectural and graphic designers: Celina Brownotter, Anjelica S. Gallegos, Freeland Livingston, Selina Martinez, Bobby Joe Smith III, and Zoë Toledo.

Click here for details. 

Get Your Gallery Fix
Gallery Weekend 2024
Thursday, June 27th– Saturday, June 29th
ROW DTLA and multiple galleries

Want to binge on LA’s art offerings? Starting this Thursday evening is LA Gallery Weekend when members of the consortium Gallery Platform LA open their doors to new exhibitions and talks.

There is lots to choose from, including a Friday morning walk through with the artist Rebecca Campbell at LA Louver in Venice, showcasing her latest eerie depictions of adolescence. On Friday evening, Jeffrey Deitch launches Isaac Psalm Escoto a.k.a. Sickid: Gas Station Dinner, a show of works by the billboard street artist Sickid whose exhibition title was inspired, says Deitch, by his years of “living off gas station food.” Also on the LA+food theme... on Saturday Anat Ebgi will hold an opening reception for Kate Pincus-Whitney: To Live and To Dine in LA/ You Taste Like Home. Pincus-Whitney is the Santa Monica-born artist who maps “culture, place, and self through the foods and objects we consume."

Plan your weekend at galleryplatform.la. And find out more from KCRW's Art Insider, here.

Kate Pincus-Whitney To Live and To Dine in LA/ You Taste Like Home: Ladies of the Canyon, 2024 (Detail)

Gallery Tour — Vincent Valdez: El Chavez Ravine
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Saturday, Jun 29th; 1:30 PM–2:00 PM

One of LA’s most tragic and epic urban renewal stories is that of Chavez Ravine — in which a Mexican American community was forced off their properties in Elysian Park to make way for a public housing development (designed by Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander) that was then killed by McCarthyite politicians, who later sold the land for a song to Walter O’Malley to build his Dodger Stadium.

That story from the 1950s is unfinished. Now, “state lawmakers are considering a bill that would force the City of LA to investigate whether hundreds of displaced families... qualify for monetary reparations,” reports Aaron Schrank for KCRW.

Currently, LACMA is showing Vincent Valdez and Ry Cooder: El Chavez Ravine, Valdez’s oil painting on a 1953 Good Humor ice cream truck that portrayed the forced removal, and this Saturday you can learn more about it on a docent tour. The painting derives from a 2004 collaboration between the musician Ry Cooder and Valdez, to create a painting to align with Cooder's album “Chavez Ravine” (2005), a musical interpretation of the neighborhood’s history. Cooder, incidentally, was interviewed about that album on KCRW’s Which Way, LA?.

The work, recently acquired by LACMA, is “a monument to a disturbing chapter in L.A. history and symbolizes struggles across the country about affordable housing, eminent domain, gentrification, and discrimination.” 

Click here for details.

Note: On Tuesday, July 16th, Vincent Valdez will join Ed Ruscha, Judy Baca, and Michael Govan for a screening and discussion of Ruscha’s short film Elysian Park and the Stone Quarry Hill. 

Vincent Valdez, El Chavez Ravine, 2005–7, LACMA, gift of Ryland Cooder, © Vincent Valdez and Ry Cooder/LACMA

Help Put Down Roots
Groundbreaking and public volunteer day at KitchenPOD
Saturday, June 29th | 9:00 AM–12:00 PM
George Washington Carver Middle School, 4410 McKinley Avenue Los Angeles, 90011

RootDown LA is a nonprofit in South LA that partners with neighborhood schools and businesses to provide youth training and classes aimed at getting “people excited to eat their veggies,” in an area sorely deprived of freshly grown vegetables and other nutritious foods.

Now it's building a "KitchenPOD," a mobile, passively cooled, adapted shipping container with solar-powered refrigeration and a layer of straw bale insulation that will house the George Washington Carver Middle School garden’s culinary programming. It was designed by there.studio, and was selected by  U.S. Green Building Council California (USGBC-CA) as its 2024 Environmental Justice Project.

An official groundbreaking takes place this Saturday morning, and visitors are invited to get their hands in the dirt, preparing new raised beds for the expanding vegetable garden, while starting on construction of the KitchenPod. 

“The KitchenPOD is more than just a structure,” said Karen Ramirez, Executive Director, RootDown LA, in a press release. “It's a dynamic platform for change. It extends and supports our impactful programming to promote health and wellness, offering zero-waste culinary and horticultural programming for a Youth-driven Neighborhood Food System.” 

More community gardening days will follow.

Click here for details.

What I'm Digging

Pretty in Pink

For a good while now, it has felt as if LA had a house style, as in white box-Socal Modernist. So it was a delight to see the winners selected for the 2024 AIA/LA Residential Design Awards. They are joyfully eclectic, ranging from the curvaceous Offset ADU designed by Byben, to The Jagger, a fearsome sawtooth roofed apartment designed by Hopson Rodstrom Design, to the pretty-in-pink small multifamily Axolotl, Los Feliz, designed by Yu2e, below. Check them out, here.

Axolotl, Los Feliz, designed by Yu2e. Photo by Taiyo Watanabe