Dear DnA Readers,

I hope you are doing well and enjoying your LA staycation. There are plenty of Design Things to Do this summer, like getting your fortune foretold in the garden of the Schindler House, time traveling in a music video love letter to old Silver Lake, and visiting a Soriano home in Long Beach! Read on for all that.

You may also want to head over to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills in the coming weeks, because the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed shopping mall is getting ready for its rebirth.

That's right. You’re doubtless familiar with the concrete block houses designed by FLW in Los Angeles. But did you know he also designed a ritzy little shopping center? Yes, the Anderton Court Shops, at 332 North Rodeo Drive.

An ex-model turned wealthy socialite named Nina Anderton (no relation to yours truly, sadly) commissioned Wright to create a showcase for her favorite couturier, Eric Bass, who would have been the anchor tenant. But high costs and conflicts with both Wright and Bass, who turned out to be married, put crimps in the project, as explained to the LA Times some years ago by the building's superintendent of construction.

The Anderton Court Building was completed in 1954, though not to Wright's original specifications. Ceilings and spires intended to be copper were instead made out of fiberglass-reinforced plastic, writes Etan Rosenbloom. It did not get the lush landscaping both the client and architect hoped for. Later owners added a mezzanine floor, dividing the tall windows. They painted the tan buildings black and white. Meanwhile, Anderton abandoned plans to occupy some space there herself and remained in her Bel Air home where she nurtured 200 prize rose bushes and was robbed several times of her furs and jewels. 

Still, out of it all came a three-story structure, plus a penthouse, containing three storefronts around a V-shaped court, accessed by an angular ramp said to echo Wright’s early designs for his Guggenheim Museum on 5th Avenue in New York City. A triangulated grid pattern and chevrons form a decorative theme throughout. While it hasn't garnered universal praise from architecture critics over the years, it was designated as Beverly Hills Landmark No. 6 and earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places.

However, the mall went through multiple owners and finally fell dormant, sitting forlornly between Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent. Luckily, a brand has stepped in that recognizes the potential of the site, which, unlike all the neighboring boutiques, is set back from the sidewalk. Givenchy, the French luxury fashion and perfume house, has leased the property and is rehabilitating it. The company will replace "non-original elements and, generally, refresh the building’s exterior finishes," according to the city's Cultural Heritage Commission Report. But it won't go back to the original tan color. After all, the existing paint scheme matches Givenchy's own black-and-white identity.

The finished mall is scheduled to open in early August. Watch this space for more details!

Anderton Court Shops is soon to be home to Givenchy. Image courtesy City of Beverly Hills
Planning Division.

Top of page: Lightwell at Anderton Court Shops, which was made of reinforced concrete finished with smooth cement plaster. Photo by Etan Rosenbloom, etandoesla.com

Design Things To Do

Design for Dignity
Friday, July 26th, and Friday, August 2nd; 7:30 AM–1:00 PM
AIA|LA’s Center for Communities, 4450 West Adams Blvd. LA, CA 90016

For almost a decade, every year the AIA/LA has hosted a conference about how to address LA’s housing crisis, entitled Design for Dignity, produced by Will Wright, director of government and public affairs at the Architects’ Institute. This year is the ninth outing and it comes with an added attraction — the chance to visit AIA/LA’s new space in a converted bank on West Adams Boulevard.  

The conference, taking place on two Fridays, will cover topics including adaptive reuse, upcoming new funding streams, regulatory reform, how to ramp up housing aimed at families, and more. Architects and housing experts in the speaker line-up include Dana Cuff, Patrick Tighe, Tara Barauskas, Shane Phillips, and Alan Pullman (see in Soriano story, below). I’ll moderate one of the panels, The Balancing Act, about the pros and cons of the litany of policies aimed at producing more housing, from Measure ULA to ED1, and the role of thoughtful design in smoothing their path. 

It all sounds wonky, yes, but it is hard to understand LA’s housing crisis without getting a grasp on the policy foundation it is built on.

Click here for information and tickets.

Design For Dignity will be held at the new home of AIA/LA and ACLA. Image courtesy AIA/LA.

Multifam Glam, Again!
Tour of Multifamily Housing, hosted by Abundant Housing
Saturday, July 27th, 10:00 AM–12:30 PM

Looking for apartment living with style? Then please join me and the team at Abundant Housing for 'Multifam Glam, Again!' for a tour of three multifamily buildings in East Hollywood and the Eastside that show that living well comes in many forms.

Gems include a live-work loft building in Elysian Park by the inventive architect Warren Techentin, and Treehouse Hollywood, a coliving building that lives up to its name with an astonishingly lush rooftop garden (by Sean Knibb), from the team led by the developer Prophet Walker, just anointed an LA Influential by the LA Times.  

Click here for information and tickets.

"Glam" live-work building on Sunset by Warren Techentin. Photo by Eric Staudenmaier.

Beyond the Superficial
Tradition and Transformation: Past and Present Influences of Japanese Architecture
Saturday, July 27th, 11:00 AM
SAH/SCC in-person salon series
The Neutra Office Building, 2379 Glendale Boulevard, Silver Lake

At last year’s Modernism Week, architect Takashi Yanai (EYRC), and the architectural historian Sian Winship gave riveting presentations about Japanese architecture and its influence in Southern California.

So it’s great to learn they are back to speak about the topic again, this time in conversation with Victoria Lautman, host of the VISUAL WORLD with Victoria Lautman series for the Society of Architectural Historians/Southern California Chapter (SAH/SCC).

As SAH explains, “Japanese-inspired” is “a catch-all term used to describe and sell homes, emphasizing features like sliding doors, natural materials, the fluidity of indoor/outdoor spaces, and serene gardens or courtyards. But these elements are also interchangeable with those of mid-century Modernism… and extend beyond superficial aesthetics.”

Click here to buy tickets for the in-person or via Zoom.

Waverly residence by EYRC, where Takashi Yanai is a partner. Photo by Mathew Millman.

"Ghost Signs (Sleight of Hand)"
A video love letter to LA by Modern Time Machines
Zebulon, 2478 Fletcher Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90039
Monday, August 5th, 8:00 PM

Feeling like Los Angeles is changing too fast? Put on your time travel spectacles and take a drive down memory lane, in "Ghost Signs (Sleight of Hand)", a song and video created by Ben Golomb for his band Modern Time Machines. See it at a performance by the band at Zebulon Café Concert on August 5th. 

"Ghost Signs (Sleight of Hand)" is a bittersweet love letter to vintage LA, "with time-lapse progressions of dearly departed music venues (The Satellite), Googie buildings (Lytton Savings), Happy/Sad foot sign,” and more, explains Golomb. He spent a decade working on the project, finding rarely-seen images of Silver Lake and Echo Park. A highlight of the video is a cameo by king-of-kitsch Charles Phoenix as a “time machine equipment salesman.”

For a critique of the music video, I turned to hubby Robin Bennett Stein, aka DJ Caviar (see below). He says he loves this one, which he calls garage-Sci-fi. “It's mystical psych and jazz drum-fill texture win the day. Dig the goofy time machine and dilapidated late ‘60s muscle car. Almost old-school hipsteroony!"

Joining MTM in the line-up on August 5th are Happy Hollows and Giant Waste Of Man.

Click here for details. Catch the video on YouTube, here.

Charles Phoenix has a cameo in the Ghost Signs (Sleight of Hand) video.

Soriano in Long Beach
Conversation with Alan Pullman and Wolfgang Wagener in the Garden of the Kimpson-Nixon House
Saturday, August 10th, 10 AM–11:30 AM
Address provided upon RSVP

When Julius Shulman, the venerated photographer of Los Angeles modernism, decided to build his own home, he picked Rafael Soriano, architect and engaging companion, who was passionate about music and adventurous in design.

Soriano had rejected the period revival European styles taught at USC in the 1920s, decamped to work for the radical Richard Neutra, and went on to build a 1950 Case Study House and later created an all-aluminum building system design called “Soria Structures.”

He also designed the 1940 Kimpson-Nixon house in Long Beach, now owned by Studio One Eleven founder Alan Pullman and his family. I’ll talk with Pullman in his home about Soriano’s design, along with Wolfgang Wagener, author of the book, Raphael Soriano. The event is hosted by FORT: LA, which also published this trail about Soriano’s work in LA.

Click here to get tickets. Add the code KCRWDNA for a 25% discount!

Note: More love for Long Beach modernism: Check out the FORT: LA self-guided trail, Ed Killingsworth in Long Beach, and this playlist curated by DJ Caviar about the experience of being inside Killingsworth’s Seeley House. Plus, coming soon from FORT: LA, another trail focused on Long Beach, From “Iowa by the Sea” to “International City”: Three Waves of High-Rise Oceanfront Living in Downtown Long Beach.

What I'm Digging

Finnish Fun

As fans of foreign language political and spy dramas, hubby and I of course adore Babylon Berlin, now back with Season 4, but we are also loving the oddball Stop Nyquist. In this Finnish black comedy, a Forrest Gump-like Aleksis Nyqvist goes from being whipping boy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the unlikely head of a newly founded secret service as Finnish-Russian tensions mount. All hell breaks loose, compounded by high-level incompetence. Stop Nyquist has echoes of Dr. Strangelove, but is very much of this moment of high anxiety in Europe.

Spies and politicians bumble their way through Stop Nyquist. Photo courtesy Apple TV+