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Design Things To Do
Diane von Furstenberg: Woman Before Fashion
And
Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time & Technology
October 17th, 2024, to March 2nd, 2025;
Public Opening, October 17th, with After Hours viewing 6:00–9:00 pm
The Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N Sepulveda Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90049
Dress for Success
It's been 50 years since Diane Von Furstenberg introduced what would become her iconic knitted jersey wrap dress while being very glamorous and partying hard in 1970s New York. Now the Skirball Cultural Center presents an exhibition about DVF's remarkable life and work. Expect to find over sixty pieces drawn from her archives as well as images and audio recounting the life story of von Furstenberg, born Diane Simone Michele Halfin in Belgium to a Holocaust survivor and a war refugee.
 Diane Von Furstenberg wears her Wrap dess. Photo courtesy Skirball Cultural Center
Tribute to Trees
While at the Skirball, also check out a show produced as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide. Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time & Technology, by artists Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg, explores trees — and their role as sources of life, of shade, and of cultural memory — through the lens of science, from dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) to AI. The installation includes a 10,000-pound, salvaged Eucalyptus tree section stamped with existential questions and an aerial video portrait of “LA's urban treescapes overhead across four major thoroughfares in Los Angeles panning down Hollywood, Sunset, Manchester, and Whittier Boulevards from a bird’s-eye view to contrast their differences.” They have also created a participatory system using AI that allows visitors to create their own visual and textual "tributes" to specific LA trees.
Click here for details about both shows.
Note: LA's deep inequity in tree canopy in South and East LA and the challenges surrounding adding more trees were recently analysed here.
 Tiffany Schlain and Ken Goldberg with their Tree of Life. Photo courtesy Skirball Cultural Center.
Energy Hogs
Transforming Data Centers for a Sustainable Future
October 17th, 4:00–5:30 PM
ARUP (or Hybrid)
ONLINE (and in-person at 560 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94105)
As discussed above, data centers are energy hogs, now outstripping the airline industry. Luckily, experts are thinking about how to reduce the load and will share their insights this Thursday at a panel discussion hosted by US Green Building Council California (USGBC-CA).
Expect to learn about “advanced cooling technologies, building automation, grid interoperability, demand response, and low-carbon construction materials.” This could be fascinating, or exceedingly wonky (hopefully someone will mention the benefits of trees, above.) Either way, it matters. The dialogue takes place at ARUP engineer's San Francisco office but also, in keeping with the topic, will be transmitted online.
Click here for details.
 Welcome to the fastest growing workplace. Image of a data center courtesy wikimedia.
PST Art West LA Hub: Culver City Block Party
Saturday, October 19th | 4:30 PM–9:00 PM
Multiple locations
Feeling so overwhelmed by so many PST ART events that you've stayed home?
Make it easier on yourself with a bite-size package. This Saturday evening, a group of shows and events have been bundled together, entitled PST Art West LA Hub: Culver City Block Party.
It includes museum-hopping between three of the region’s most interesting institutions, all in Culver City. There is the Wende Museum, which has just unveiled a new exhibition Counter / Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency, tracing "the historical roots of surveillance devices and methods, and the Cold War dynamics that shaped and spread them." Somewhat related, the nearby Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), is showing Remote Sensing: Explorations Into the Art of Detection, about the aerospace industry and remote sensing technologies "that gather information without physical contact between the observer and the observed." Then CLUI's neighbor, the wonderfully curious Museum of Jurassic Technology, is dancing to another beat, with A Veiled Gazelle - Intimations of the Infinite and Eternal, recreation of the decorative architecture of Al-Andalus in Muslim-ruled Spain (described in more detail in this newsletter).
Beyond Culver City, West LA to South LA PST ART Weekend invites you to treats such as a hike through restored native habitat at Baldwin Hills Overlook with Usal Project guide Gretchen Rudolph, and a stop at Crenshaw Dairy Mart for "Ancestry Day," and a viewing of the exhibition Free the Land! Free the People!, a study of the Mart’s abolitionist pod, “autonomously irrigated, solar-powered gardens within geodesic domes.”
Click here for details.
 MJT Mudéjar Ceiling. Image courtesy of The Museum of Jurassic Technology
Top Talent Talks at USC
Multiple Locations, USC Campus
Multiple Dates and Times
USC Architecture School, now led by new dean Brett Steele, previously at UCLA, has mounted a lively public lecture series this fall. Three this month take place midday — Architectural Installations by Lisa Little (October 16th), whose firm Vertebrae LA just won an A+D 2024 Design Award for "Rhizomatic Lilac Fizz" (see image, top of newsletter); British architect Bea Martin lectures on Mechanic Assemblies (October 18th); Eui-Sung Yi, partner at Morphosis, and leading voice at the firm since founder Thom Mayne has stepped back, will present his new book M3 (October 30th).
Then, on October 28th, the highly talented Mexico City-based architect Tatiana Bilbao will give an evening lecture about her work from private houses (below) to affordable housing, from museum installations to masterplans. All lectures are free and open to the public.
Click here for all the details.
 Casa Valhalla on the Mexican Pacific Coast, Photo Iwan Baan/Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO.
Keep FORT Strong
Fundraiser
Arroyo del Rey, Pasadena
Saturday, October 19th, 11:00 AM–2:00 PM
The young nonprofit Friends of Residential Treasures Los Angeles (FORT: LA) is a fount of self-driving trails, talks, films, research and civic projects like Every School Has a House and Awesome and Affordable (full disclosure: I am a co-author on this project). But all that activity needs support; hence a fundraiser taking place this Saturday.
Luckily, it takes place in a “residential treasure:” Arroyo del Rey, designed by Buff and Hensman for Carol Soucek King and Richard King in Pasadena's Arroyo Seco. Get access to more "treasures" by scooping up auction items that include a two-night stay at William Krisel's Ocotillo Lodge in Palm Springs, a private tour of Paul R. Williams’ Howard-Nagin Residence, cocktails at Gregory Ain's Avenel Cooperative Housing Project, and drinks at Richard Neutra's marvelous Strathmore Apartments in Westwood Village.
Raymond Neutra, son of Richard, will garner the Dagny Mayo Award, for contributions to architecture including the revival of the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design.
KCRW listeners get a $25 discount with promo code KCRWDNA.
Click here to purchase tickets.
 Arroyo del Rey, designed by Buff and Hensman, 1979. Photo by Michael Locke.
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