Dear DnA friends,

I hope you are doing okay, despite the loss of our favorite, bat-biting ‘Prince of Darkness’ and family man Ozzy Osbourne. 

Indeed, there is so much about the world these days that feels off-kilter; it is nice to witness something that feels like the stars have aligned — such as connecting people who lost their homes to fire to craftsman houses pending demolition in other parts of town.

A few weeks after the Eaton and Palisades fires, I got a call from Morgan Sykes Jaybush, Creative Director at Omgivning, an architecture firm that has retrofitted hundreds of historic highrises. He is also a board member at Santa Monica Conservancy, which tracks demolition permits.

On seeing the list earlier this year, he had a Eureka moment. Why not save residential treasures due for the landfill and give them to homeowners as replacement homes in Altadena and the Palisades? He was calling around to test the idea on people.

Jacques Laramie, Gwen Sukeena, and Morgan Sykes Jaybush at the house on St. George Street. Photo by Gary Leonard

My immediate reaction was, "That's brilliant, Morgan." It's so glaringly obvious, simple, and kills several birds with one stone.

Besides, LA has a history of house-relocations, especially during massive upheavals like the construction of the freeways and demolition of Bunker Hill. Back then, Angelenos would transport an entire home on a truck and, like turtles plodding around with their homes on their backs, go park themselves and their house on a new site in another neighborhood.

However, Morgan's concept also raised plenty of logistical questions. Would such houses meet today's building codes? Could old wood structures replace homes in high fire risk zones? How would they be moved when roads today are jammed with utility lines, overpasses, and other encumbrances? What would the process cost homeowners, and would it wind up more affordable than new build options? How would he find the existing homeowners anxious to demolish their properties, and persuade them to agree to participate, etc., etc.?

It turned out Morgan was on the case, researching all of this. Plus, he was networking with a slew of preservation-minded individuals, and organizations that were thinking along the same lines or wound up being collaborators in the process — including Los Angeles Conservancy, Before the 101, Esotouric, preservationist Brad Chambers, interior designer Gwen Sukeena and hobbyist carpenter Jacques Laramee, artist Evan Chambers and educator Caitlin Chambers, Dinuba House Movers, Nous Engineering, City of Los Angeles Council District 13, and the County of Los Angeles.

Photo by Gwen Sukeena.

Now Morgan's stroke of inspiration has become reality. Earlier this month, I got to meet up with him, Brad Chambers, and Gwen Sukeena and Jacques Laramee, a couple who lost their home in the Eaton Fire, at the site of a craftsman house on St. George Street in Los Feliz that is being transported — in sections — to their property in Altadena. After their huge loss, they were hopeful, having found, said Gwen, "a match made in heaven."  

“Reduce, reuse, recycle," she added, pointing to a tattoo of the recycling symbol on Jacques' wrist. "We know that this house is not going to be stuck in some landfill, and we're actually creating a new life for this house, and a new home.”

Read or listen to the full story on KCRW, here.

Design Things To Do

CEQA Gone: Right or Wrong?
Wednesday, July 23rd, 5:00–6:00PM
Online conversation hosted by FORT: LA

When the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, was passed by Governor Ronald Reagan in 1970, the law had the worthy goal of limiting development that could be destructive to our state’s bountiful lands. Subsequently, it became a weapon wielded by opponents to thwart projects from urban housing and high-speed rail to a food bank, a child-care center, and a bike lane through Cheviot Hills.

 

Now, on signing AB 130 and SB 131 last month, Governor Gavin Newsom has exempted infill housing and some other building types, such as high-tech factories, from vague “environmental review.”  

 

On one hand, these reforms may do away with a major cause of added costs and length of construction for necessary new housing. But what happens in situations that need environmental protection? What happens to the quality of buildings now exempted from strong oversight? And how does this change connect to the push for greater "abundance?"  

 

Get answers to all of the above at FORT: LA's CEQA Gone: Right or Wrong, an online conversation moderated by Yours Truly, with environmental lawyer Jamie T Hall, architect
Leo Marmol of the firm Marmol Radziner, and Eduardo Mendoza, policy director for Liveable Communities Initiative.

 

Click here to sign up.

Sportsmen's Lodge, designed by Marmol Radziner, has been challenged by neighbors using CEQA.

Could This be Your "Habitat?"
Thursday, July 24th, 7:45 - 9:30 AM 
Westside Urban Forum
Helms Design Center, 8745 Washington Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232

Many of the midrise apartment buildings going up on our arterials are so blocky and banal that there’s a yearning for LA's lovely, lower-density complexes of the past. The recent Small Lots, Big Impacts competition sought 21st-century variants on this legacy. As the organizer Dana Cuff, of cityLAB-UCLA, and juror Christopher Hawthorne wrote in this LA Times Op-Ed, "With affordability pressures as intense as ever, now is the time not to Manhattanize but, once again, to Los Angelize L.A."

Such small-scale homes are deeply appealing but arguably won't deliver the volume of housing necessary right now. Perhaps the answer is Manhattan-level densification. Enter
SHOP architects of New York, designer with Lendlease and Relm landscape architects, of Habitat, also known as 3401 South La Cienega, a 260-unit residential building and a six-story, 250,000 square foot office building, sited by the La Cienega/Jefferson light rail station, with a stepped back profile and landscaped balconies and open spaces.

It's big, it's got some oomph, and it is slated to open next year. Come hear the developers discuss this future-forward project at a breakfast meeting hosted by Westside Urban Forum this Thursday. I, for one, am curious to learn if its name is meant to invoke Moshe Safdie's amazing Habitat 67.

Click here for tickets.

Rendering of Habitat, courtesy of SHOP

Critical Event
Thursday, July 24th, 6:00–8:00 PM
Schindler House, 835 North Kings Road, West Hollywood, CA 90069

Bring your love of smart criticism to Mimi Zeiger’s Table Residency Program, Read Write / Write Read this Thursday.

Zeiger, a noted independent critic, editor, and curator, will host a salon for lovers of design journalism, in the tradition of those held by Schindler House co-creator Pauline Schindler, while honoring the “mother” of all Los Angeles architecture critics, Esther McCoy. The table residency is part of the programming attached to the MAK Center's exhibition Reading Room, curated by Beth Stryker and Robert Kett.

Zeiger invites everyone to add a piece of criticism or reporting to an open archive that will be on view.

RSVP here and upload your selection here.

Furniture for Reading by Ryan Preciado: Table for Reading, Plywood, paint, and laminate; Manuel Stools, Maple, paint, and upholstery. Courtesy the artist and Karma. Photo by Joshua Schaedel.

 

Banking on Art
A Millard Sheets Bus Tour, by LA Conservancy
Sunday, July 27th, 10:00 AM–1:30 PM
Meeting Location: Hollywood Heritage Museum

Do banks have to be soulless? Not when they were run by a financier like Howard Ahmanson, who, in the late 1950s, commissioned the California artist Millard Sheets to design and decorate more than 160 branches of the Home Savings and Loan bank (still extant as Chase Bank), many of them in Los Angeles.

That was only part of Sheets' prolific output in LA. This Sunday, Adam Arenson, author of Banking on Beauty: Millard Sheets and Midcentury Commercial Architecture in California, will lead an LA Conservancy bus tour of sites adorned with Sheets' murals, mosaics, and stained glass, while raising awareness of buildings threatened by significant alterations.

Click here for tickets and details.

Image courtesy LA Conservancy

Throw Some Shade
Author Sam Bloch talks with Councilmember Nithya Raman
Thursday, July 31st, 7:00pm
Skylight Books, 1818 N Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027

On moving to Los Angeles from old Europe, where cities in hot countries are designed for shading, from trees to overhangs and colonnades, I was shocked to discover how little shade features in the buildings and street design of Los Angeles, especially in lower-income neighborhoods, where sidewalks and transit stops are devoid of trees or canopies and school yards are cruelly carpeted in unshaded asphalt.

Now, environmental journalist Sam Bloch has gone deep into the topic with his new book Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource. These days, "we ignore the benefits of shade at our own peril. Heatwaves are now the country’s deadliest natural disasters, with victims concentrated in poorer, less shady areas. For some, finding shade is a matter of life and death," he says.

Next Thursday, he will talk about the book with Councilmember Nithya Raman at Skylight Books.

Click here to RSVP.

Broadway, in DTLA, offers pedestrians almost no shade. Photo by Frances Anderton.

ARCHITECTON
Opens in theaters, August 1st

Stone and its artificial successor, concrete, are the building blocks of much of our architectural heritage. But quarrying stone and manufacturing concrete have enormous environmental costs. That's a concern of Victor Kossakovsky, Russian filmmaker whose latest documentary, ARCHITECTON, will be released by A24 in theaters nationwide on August 1st.

 

The film opens with ominous music and forbidding skies as the camera slowly pans down bombed out concrete apartments in Ukraine. Thus ensues a meditation on masonry, from its enduring ruins to today's destructive use of it. The film features one architect, Michele de Lucchi, who the filmmaker deemed sufficiently humble to include.

Slow, but beautifully shot by director of photography Ben Bernhard.

 

Check out the trailer here. Find screenings near you, here. 

 

Still from Architecton, courtesy of A24.

Single Stairway to Heaven
Design Competition, sponsored by Livable Communities Initiative
Deadline: August 31st

If you have ever wondered why apartment buildings in Los Angeles invariably feature enclosed, unpleasant "double-loaded corridors," this is in part due to building codes requiring two staircases. Reforming this code and mandating only one staircase could open the door to far more interesting apartment building design, say the team at Livable Communities Initiative. LCI has launched a competition for great "single stair" designs, and entries are due by August 31st. There is $30,000 in prize money to be shared among winners.

Learn more and sign up here.

Image courtesy Livable Communities Initiative.

What I'm Digging

Tower of Power

Who doesn't love a David v. Goliath story about the little guy defying venal developers and heartless bureaucrats, especially when he does so with a weapon in the form of a rickety, quirky, self-built tower? Now Chen Tianming's multi-floor family home — described by the NYT as "a cross between a camping tent and a giant wedding cake" — is drawing tourists, while the 800-acre resort that was meant to displace his home in Guizhou province has been cancelled.

Photo by Andrea Verdelli

Cat City

There is little more soothing during trying times than a cat photo (or better yet, a cat), especially those taken by Marcel Heijnen. His latest "Cats of" book, about to be published by Thames & Hudson, focuses on the feral City Cats of Istanbul, who occupy sacred and civic spaces with that always marvelous blend of feline superiority and abandon.

Image from City Cats of Istanbul, courtesy
Marcel Heijnen.

Tales from the Eternal City

While doing research for my book on multifamily housing, a friend recommended I read Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome novels, because she provides such detailed descriptions of the apartment buildings and courtyard housing that have influenced us to this day. With TikTok-era trepidation at a book with almost 1000 pages (plus a 120-page glossary), I finally cracked open The First Man in Rome, the first of seven novels by the late McCullough (who also wrote The Thorn Birds). Now I am deep in her captivating stories of power, ambition, and daily life in the Eternal City - that are both so distant from and yet so close to our torrid times.

Ancient Roman apartment block, or Insula. Insula dei Dipinti (Ostia) reconstruction (I. Gismondi). Courtesy smarthistory.org