Santa Monica seeks your ideas for its airport site; Come see the winning "love letters" to LA's lost landmarks; find out about the dark cityscapes of Thomas Kinkade, and much more.
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Now tariffs may add to an already overflowing basket of regional challenges that propelled longtime LA watcher Patt Morrison to write this punchy Op-Ed, asking if the City of Angels can still "accomplish big things?"
She lays out the barriers to bigness, yet there are all sorts of golden opportunities for the region to do big things, such as the pending Olympics and the slated closure of the Santa Monica Airport, both in 2028. I'll focus on the Olympics later. For now, the airport.
Right now, the City of Santa Monica is in the midst of a public outreach process that will determine the future use of the airport once it closes (per a consent decree that returns control of the airport back to the City.) It's vital that you add your voice to the mix, because this is not just a local issue.
Back in 2014, Santa Monica voters passed Measure LC, prohibiting new development on airport land following closure, except for parks and recreation, unless voters approved other uses.
Now the city, working with a consultant master planning team Sasaki, is asking for two kinds of input: Letters of Interest from prospective development partners; and public feedback that will lead to three scenarios for the airport site to be considered later this year by City Council; one will be a park-only option, and at least one other option will include housing.
The three scenarios will also be shaped by responses to this "Phase 3a" survey, which asks respondents to consider six "layers that will inform site design." These "layers" include "connectivity and mobility" (how many roads and paths do you want to have criss-cross the site?). They encompass water, topography, and ecology; the level of passive and active uses (meaning, unprogrammed parkland versus football pitches, for example); and housing and revenue generation on site.
Put on your planning hat and choose how many roads should cross the airport, in the Layers Survey.
The survey is time-consuming and wonky (though these videos might help.) As hubby Robin Bennett Stein said after poring over it for a while, "it is a snap for folks who hold multiple PhDs in City Planning, Ecosystems Science, Macro and Micro Economics; History of Cities from Sumeria, Babylon, Crete and SubSaharan Africa; Landscape Design, Climate Change and Meteorology; and Politics, Governance and City Management."
But don't let that put you off!
Present and future Santa Monicans and visitors need to make their voices heard. After all, some 90% of people who work in Santa Monica — including teachers, healthcare and tourism staffers — are not able to live there thanks to crushing housing costs. Meanwhile, evacuees from the neighboring Palisades have moved into the area, further demonstrating that small municipalities like Santa Monica are part of a wide web, and that amenities like the airport should be evaluated at a regional scale.
There is a short timeline for determining a potentially transformative development. Let's accomplish a "big thing" for the LA of tomorrow!
Design Things To Do
Art For Everybody Thursday, April 17th, 7:15 PM Laemmle NoHo, 5240 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91601
The late, bestselling painter Thomas Kinkade branded himself as the “Painter of Light,” but it turns out he had a dark side, as explored in Art For Everybody, a documentary directed by Miranda Yousef, screening this Thursday in NoHo.
Find out more about the man behind the artist the art world loved to hate, and see the paintings he kept hidden from his fans, many showing cityscapes far more bleak than his famed images of a saccharine, pastoral America.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Yousef, producer Tim Rummel, and interviewees Susan Orlean and Jeffrey Vallance.
Thomas Kinkade at work. Imagery courtesy Art for Everybody/Kinkade Family Foundation
20 (More...) Years of SPRAWL Saturday, April 19th, 11:00 AM Neutra Office Building in Silver Lake, 2379 Glendale Blvd, Silver Lake
OR Via Zoom
If you want a lively Saturday morning, come hear VISUAL WORLD host Victoria Lautman and architecture and urban planning professor Robert Bruegmann discuss the pros and cons of sprawl, at an event presented by the Society for Architectural Historians, SoCal chapter.
Bruegmann broke with urban planning orthodoxy when he wrote the 2005 book SPRAWL: A Compact History, a defense of endless suburbia (which helped inform this provocative New York Times article by Conor Dougherty). Twenty years on, an update of the book is on the horizon. The conversation Saturday is especially timely with the recent fires testing our region's capacity for ceaseless encroachment into the WUI (Wildland-Urban Interface).
A Showcase House Brings Personal Renewal Bauer Estate and Gardens 2025 Pasadena Showcase House of Design Sunday, April 20th–May 18th; open for Tours, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 9:30 AM–5:00 PM.
Thirty interior and landscape designers add their stamp to the historic Pasadena Bauer Estate & Gardens, for the 60th Pasadena Showcase House of Design, which opens to the public this Sunday.
Designers include Gary Sewell and Courtney Bonifacini of GardZen Studio, who both lost homes in the Eaton Fire. As reported in Pasadena Now, among the elements in the zen garden they are creating at Bauer Estate, "two objects will hold special significance: a Buddha head and a resilient sago palm, both of which survived the fire."
“Everything in my house burned down — a hundred percent, a thousand percent,” Bonifacini told the newspaper. “But somehow, this Buddha’s head remained. She’s beautiful, she’s strong, she’s resilient. And that, to me, represents our community.”
The Bauer estate. Image courtesy Pasadena Showcase House.
Building a Better World
Sustainable Materials in Urban Construction: Transatlantic Lessons from Austria and the U.S. Wednesday, April 23rd, 5:00 PM–7:00 PM
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After Spaceship Earth Saturday, April 26th, 3:00 PM–5:00 PM MAK Center/Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood, CA 90069
Two upcoming events at the MAK Center/Schindler House offer different takes on utopian thinking.
Next Wednesday, a group of Austrian transplants will offer up their thoughts on building a better world, in back-to-back panels that take on different scales of design: first, Beyond Concrete – Rethinking Materials for Sustainable Cities; and then Designing the Sustainable City — Urban Development for a Changing World.
The speakers are architects Gerhard W. Mayer, Frank Escher, Mark Mack, Alexa Sekyra, Axel Schmitzberger, and Dana Bauer, and the two-hour symposium is co-sponsored by the Austrian Consulate General and Austrian Trade Commission.
Then, on the following Saturday, April 26th, author Eva Díaz joins artists Oscar Tuazon and Connie Samaras to discuss Diaz’s new book After Spaceship Earth: Art, Techno-utopia, and Other Science Fictions, about contemporary artists, such as Tuazon and Samaras, "who confront, challenge, and reimagine R. Buckminster Fuller’s techno-utopianism to envision more just futures."
Love the image of the dejected astronaut on the cover of Diaz's book (below).
Click here for information about Sustainable Materials in Urban Construction.
Click here for information about After Spaceship Earth.
Section of cover of the book After Spaceship Earth, by Eva Díaz.
Designs to Heal the Heart of LA
AIA/LA Center for Communities 4450 West Adams Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90016 April 25th — May 1st; Opening Reception: April 25th, 6:00–8:00 PM
Also on show at: 18th Street Arts Center, 1639 18th St, Santa Monica, CA 90404 April 28th–May 2nd, 10:00 AM–4:00 PM
Now the results are in, and designers have created thoughtful and inventive retakes on beloved landmarks including Altadena's Bunny Museum, Scripps Hall, Park Planned Homes, Nature Friends Clubhouse (below), Will Rogers Ranch House, Business Block and Corpus Christi Church, Malibu’s Reel Inn, and Moonshadows and Feed Bin.
They will be displayed at a public event next Friday at AIA/LA's Center for Communities, and also shown at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica. I was a juror, along with Adrian Scott Fine, Sharon Johnston, Sam Lubell, Rochelle Mills, Siddhartha Majumdar, and Christina Morris, and we were delighted by the schemes. Hope to see you at the party. Click here to purchase tickets.
Nature Friends Clubhouse, before the Eaton Fire. Image courtesy Nature Friends LA.
LA Times Book Festival
Saturday, April 26th; Sunday, April 27th University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089
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The State of Housing in L.A. and Beyond, a talk at the book fair Saturday, April 26th, 12:00 PM–1:00 PM Wallis Annenberg Hall, USC
Books, books, books galore, will be on show next weekend at The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, along with many literary talents, including headliner Amanda Gorman.
I'll join my esteemed co-authors at the Angel City Press (Booth #119) on Saturday, April 26th, at 2:00 PM, and also that day I'll moderate a lunchtime panel with experts in housing design and policy: Liz Falletta, Dowell Myers and Lorcan O’Herlihy, who built the highly innovative Isla Intersections (below), with developer Holos Communities, in the face of many limitations.
A Hypnotic Rainforest of Raw Potential SCI-Arc Spring Show, 350 Merrick Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013 Opening: Saturday, April 26th, 7:00 PM On view through May 7th
The boundary-pushing school SCI-Arc is going through its own process of renewal as it seeks new leadership after two terms helmed by Hernan Diaz Alonso. During his tenure, the school appeared to move from its roots in materials and hand-fabrication into an advanced digital realm, preparing students as much for game and movie design as for tangible buildings.
Come see the latest at Jungle, the school's 2025 Spring Show, curated by Damjan Jovanovic, co-founder of the Los Angeles-based game design studio Lifeforms.io. The work, says SCI-Arc, bursts "from the primordial depths" and "reimagines SCI-Arc as a hypnotic rainforest of raw potential — a fervent crucible where new species of form and thought collide...guided by the synergy of inter-species collaboration and the relentless rhythm of techno."
The opening party on Saturday, April 26th, features DJs and a bar. The exhibition then remains on view through May 7th.
The Altadena You Want: Community-Based Urbanism The Blinn House, 180 N. Oakland Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101 Sunday, April 27th, 3:00–5:00 PM
What's next for Altadena? Many homeowners are simply figuring out how to rebuild their homes. But some locals are also seeing opportunity in this moment to solve some of the unincorporated area's pre-existing problems, like a lack of civic amenities as well as rental options that could conceivably be added to the commercial arteries.
To discuss all this, Altadena Heritage will host a conversation moderated by Elizabeth Moule. Elizabeth Moule, of Moule & Polyzoides, is co-founder of Congress for New Urbanism (CNU). She will talk with architect Steven Lewis, member of SoCal Noma Altadena Rebuild Coalition, and Marianne Cusato, Director, Community Housing and Regeneration Initiative, University of Notre Dame School of Architecture.
Sunset Magazine has released a special issue dedicated to the fires. Among stories contains this 8-Point Plan for Preserving and Redefining L.A.’s Architectural Legacy by Jaime Rummerfield, who is also part of the group that has teamed up with AD magazine to bring together clients who lost homes to the fire with architectural talent in a program called Case Study: Adapt. The line-up of architects includes Johnston Marklee, designers of the concrete Porch house, above.
What I'm Digging
Energizer Bernie
The SNL skit writes itself! Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders appears at the music festival that is a magnet for influencers and deep-pocketed students of LA's private high schools, which empty out on Coachella Fridays. You have to love his relentlessness, even down to his attire that remained unchanged for the occasion, per this amusing round-up of looks at Coachella 2025.
Clairo and Bernie Sanders speak onstage at Coachella. Photo: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Coachella
Her Majesty
And speaking of gilded youth... hubby and I are enjoying the new Spanish comedy Her Majesty, on Prime, about the bratty princess Pilar (Anna Castillo) who has to step up when her father King Alfonso XIV gets in trouble. A fun take on a growing-up story, delivered in fabulous outfits amidst gorgeous interiors and palaces in Madrid.
Her Majesty, Pilar. Image courtesy Prime.
A Good Cuppa Tea
Even though the Milan Furniture Fair is very far away, we can still enjoy the product launches that got buzz over these past few days, like the 25 teapots commissioned by the luxury Spanish fashion brand Loewe. The company displayed vessels by talents including David Chipperfield, Patricia Urquiola, Wang Shu, and, shown, the beautiful coiling design by Takayuki Sakiyama.
Teapot, designed by Takayuki Sakiyama, Image courtesy Loewe.
Nothing like a good cup of tea for calm amidst the storms. Thank you as always for reading this newsletter, and keep me posted about events.
Yours, Frances
P.S. Subscribe to the KCRW Design and Architecture newsletter here, get back issues here, and reach out to me at francesanderton@gmail.com.
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