I hope you’re doing as well as possible given the nonstop jolts to the system we've been experiencing this year.
With tariffs looming, Signalgate is already disappearing into the rear-view mirror, though, having grown up across the pond, I'm still reeling from the depth of contempt for Europe expressed by VP JD Vance and Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defence. It is puzzling that these two (who happen to have European roots themselves: Hegseth=Norwegian; Vance=English) should be so hostile to the landmass that produces such cultural treats as the Eurovision Song Contest and the Night of Ideas.
Yes, this Saturday night, the Villa Albertine, the cultural arm of the French Embassy, will host what it has described as "a marathon of philosophical debate, performances, screenings, readings, and music."
Luminaries in the arts and sciences have been invited to examine "what unites us — our histories, our skies, and our artistic expressions.”
This wonderfully French celebration of intellectualism (on a Saturday night, no less!) is taking place simultaneously at the Wende Museum (above) in Culver City and in cities across the US, and it is centered on a theme quite opposite to antagonism, namely “Common Ground.”
Topics under consideration transcend borders, and include AI and ethics, literature, urbanism, and climate action — “from wildfires reshaping Los Angeles to the oceans mirroring our environmental choices.” Also on the docket: “sports as a shared experience uniting France and the U.S.”
Now this celebration of the long alliance between France and the US takes on new meaning. The fact that the event is being held at the Wende Museum of the Cold War adds another geopolitical twist.
I’ll be at the event, talking with designer Christopher Torres and land-use lawyer Alfred Fraijo, about their very interesting "idea" for an Olympics-related Festival Trail that they have amplified into a post-fires vision for 21st century Los Angeles.
Read on for more about it in Design Things to Do, and hope to see you this Saturday.
The Grand Avenue Project, stretch of The Festival Trail, image courtesy MMRAgency Artifact
Design Things To Do
Toys As Art, Art Inspired By Toys Corey Helford Gallery (CHG), 571 S Anderson St (Enter on Willow St) Los Angeles, CA 90033 Through April 19th, open Tuesday-Saturday, 12:00–6:00 PM
If you are grown-up and still playing with toys, you are not alone. The toy industry is thriving, according to the recent Otis College Report on the Creative Economy, in part thanks to the growing demand among adults.
Is this due to a Peter Pan-like desire to remain forever young in a confusing world? Or because of the amazing creativity to be found in some toy design? The latter is evidenced at Toys As Art, Art Inspired By Toys, an exhibition at Corey Helford Gallery in DTLA, produced with the toy behemoth Mattel to mark its 80th Anniversary.
Curator Sherri J. Trahan has assembled works by numerous artists — including DABSMYLA, Gary Baseman, D*Face, Mark Ryden, and Brandi Milne — who have transformed the likenesses of Mattel's iconic brands (including Barbie®, Hot Wheels®, Fisher-Price®, UNO®, and Masters of the Universe®). In responding to the show, Juxtapoz magazine’s Evan Pricco wrote, “In the end, Mattel is more than just a toy company; it is a bastion of creativity, pushing the boundaries of what toys can mean and how they can inspire the next generation of artists, designers, and dreamers.”
Click here for details. For more on the Otis Creative Economy report and the ups and downs in design and art industries, watch this video of their recent launch. It includes a panel I hosted with guests including Barbara Bestor (below) and Chris Down, Chief Design Officer at Mattel.
Andrew Brandou Cringer of Eternia acrylic with gold vinyl border. Image courtesy CHG.
The Well Designed ADU
Henrybuilt Los Angeles
806 Mateo Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021
Thursday, April 3rd, 5:30 PM–7:30 PM
Barbara Bestor, ByBen, Bunch Design, Design, Bitches, and ORA LA are Angeleno architects of very inventive ADUs, and their work is featured in a new book, The Well-Designed Accessory Dwelling Unit: Fitting Great Architecture into Small Spaces, by Lydia Lee, with a foreword by Bestor. Lee's book is a how-to that "walks readers through every step, from design strategies that maximize square footage to understanding zoning regulations, financing, and material selection," say the publishers.
This Thursday evening, April 3rd, Henrybuilt will host a book launch, at which you can meet the author and the LA architects. And while in DTLA Thursday evening, you can check out the art opening, below...
"Highland Park ADU," by Bunch Design. Photo by Yoshihiro Makino.
Darkness and Light + DTLA Art Night Thursday, April 3rd, 5:00–10:00 PM Art/Space 114, 114 W. 4th St., LA 90013
No one wields a pencil with quite the ferocity of Laurie Lipton. In large-scale drawings she renders in minute detail the horrors of technology, consumerism, and environmental devastation. With her "fine-tooled pencil pointillism, she literally takes you into the dark heart of America,” says hubby, adding, “She is the delineator of decrepit decadence.”
You can see her latest oeuvre on show at Darkness and Light, at Art/Space 114 in downtown's historic core, together with works by Lili Lakich, Susan Feldman, and S.C. Mero, who together take on "utopian dreams, out of site-responsive punster-ism and social critique."
This event coincides with DTLA Art Night, during which galleries across Downtown Los Angeles open their doors.
Straight out of Long Beach Art+Design Walk and DTLB Long Beach Saturday, April 5th, 2:00 PM – 7:00 PM Various locations, centered on the DTLB Design District
While there, check out family-friendly attractions including “Music To My Eyes,” a showcase of music, painting, and photography — Long Beach Unified School District students who took inspiration from music and speeches by Miles Davis, Mozart, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Popstar and Hugs & Kisses, a past installation in Long Beach, by People's Architecture Office.
Night of Ideas Villa Albertine Saturday, April 5th, 5:00–11:00 PM; 8:30 PM: An Urban Vision: LA28 and The Festival Trail The Wende Museum, 10808 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90230
Villa Albertine, the cultural arm of the French Embassy, will present the Los Angeles edition of the French intellectual marathon, Night of Ideas, this Saturday at the Wende museum.
This year’s theme — Common Ground — will be explored through talks and happenings across the Wende campus. Expect conversations about AI, surveillance, and the climate as well as Haitian storytelling, a walking meditation, and stargazing with the Los Angeles Astronomical Society.
At 8:30 PM, I'll sit down with the landscape architect and urban planner Christopher Torres and the land-use lawyer Alfred Fraijo to discuss An Urban Vision: LA28 and The Festival Trail.
The Festival Trail is a proposed 28-mile network of pedestrian and bike paths overlaid on public rights of way that they have conceived (with Eli Lipmen and Hilary Norton) to connect the Games’ venues, mobility routes, new parks, plazas, and thousands of units of newly built housing. Since the fires, they have amplified this concept to present it as a broader vision for development and land-use in the region.
Our panel follows nicely on from a conversation about "Olympic Ceremonies: When Sport Meets Diplomacy," with Daniel T. Durbin, Julianna Kirschner, and Yann Descamps.
Click here to RSVP. Click here for the full schedule.
The Festival Trail would link neighborhoods in a unifying pedestrian and bike trail.
Arts Month Celebration Annenberg Beach House, 415 Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica, CA 90402 Sunday, April 6th, 2:00–4:00 PM
If you are involved in the arts and have questions about what lies ahead, combine a trip to the beach with an afternoon celebrating and learning about the arts.
In addition to printmaking with Aanii Tate and Miguelaxel Bustos-Burrola of meztli projects, and a tour of the "Refractions: Contemporary Indigenous Art" exhibition by artist River Garza in the Beach House Gallery, you can hear about how the arts are doing, based on the Otis College Report on the Creative Economy, and take a "civic engagement and narrative building workshop" led by Arts for LA. The experts from Arts for LA will explain "recent state and federal changes to arts funding, including updates to NEA guidelines."
The event is hosted by the City of Santa Monica, Cultural Affairs Division, with Arts for LA, and comes with music and snacks.
Mid-Wilshire has a bounty of quite lovely bungalow courts, duplexes, fourplexes, garden apartments, and courtyard housing that the LA Conservancy is committed to helping preserve. Come see why on Saturday, April 19th, when you can get to tour areas including the Miracle Mile Apartments, Park La Brea, and Beverly Fairfax Historic Districts.
Also, get inside the newly rehabilitated, 1920s Edinburgh Bungalow Court, which the Conservancy fought for years to save. This event is part of the Conservancy's new HOME Campaign.
Edinburgh Court following restoration and new landscaping. Photo by Frances Anderton.
What I'm Digging
Cured by AI
I can find all sorts of reasons to worry about AI (job loss, energy suck, atrophy of human brain), but then I come across dazzling stories about its upsides, like this NYT report about a dying 37 year-old man whose life was saved by a custom combination of drugs, sourced using machine learning. A doctor tapped AI to scour at top speed among thousands of medicines that could potentially be "repurposed" to cure illnesses they were not designed for. Wow. Read more on the technology in the Harvard Gazette.
I’m behind the curve on watching Severance (I couldn’t get past the premise that in today’s world, one’s work and personal life would be cleaved), but have been catching up on a terrific novel about another mind-bending split. The Anomaly, by French writer Hervé Le Tellier, is about the meeting between doppelgangers when two flights from Paris to New York, separated by three months, are filled with the same passengers, and meet the same terrifying turbulence. It’s part sci-fi, part mystery, part comedy, but primarily a meditation on who we are, which may be just a simulation. It was written during the pandemic lockdown, but is compulsive reading at any time.
A section from the cover of The Anomaly
Case Study Revisited
With the recovery from the fires moving into the rebuilding phase, just how to do it well is a hot topic among designers. AD Magazine has just launched Case Study: Adapt, a program to match property owners in the Palisades and Altadena with a curated group of contemporary architects who work in the spirit of California modernism. Leo Seigal, CEO of the interior design consultancy The Expert, and entrepreneur Dustin Bramell, who lost his midcentury house to the Palisades fire, teamed up with AD, Save Iconic Houses, and Assembledge+, Bestor Architecture, EYRC Architects, Geoffrey von Oeyen Design,Johnston Marklee, Marmol Radziner, Montalba Architects, Standard Architecture|Design, Walker Workshop, and Woods + Dangaran. While AD is associated with large, luxury housing, their stated goal with this project is to advance the goals of the original Case Study House program, with the owner-architect pairs each creating “a distinctive house predicated on the principles of modesty in scale, energy and construction efficiency, and climate resiliency.”
Architects gather to plan Case Study: Adapt. Photo: Roger Davies/Architectural Digest.
More on the Recovery
Geoffrey von Oeyen, one of the Case Study: Adapt group of design talents, also shared his expertise on Materials Matter, hosted by FORT: LA. I talked to von Oeyen, Lynnelle Bryant, and K. Ben Loescher about options for greater fire resistance (not guaranteed fire safety), ranging from closing off eaves to fortifying homes with cement-based products through to reviving adobe. Interesting.
Meanwhile, the Urban Land Institute, together with real estate experts at UCLA and USC, has released this thorough Project Recovery, and AIA/LA continues to provide resources and webinars here. From design details to rethinking land-use, the creative response to the crisis is expansive.
Well, that's it for now. Thank you as always for reading this newsletter.
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