Wisdom about Planet Earth from a Dying 'Space Architect,' a Festival Trail Hub gets its First Outing

Dear DnA friends,

Hope you are doing well, despite the loss of our Angeleno treasure Diane Keaton.

Not only was Keaton a delight on screen and an icon of style, she was also a powerful advocate for L.A.'s architectural heritage. “I remember specifically this time when we went to San Juan Capistrano, and suddenly I found myself in this enchanted world," she recalled on DnA on the publication of her book, California Romantica. "It was almost a religious experience to just stand there and to see this colonnade of arches and to watch the light passing through… And that's why I'm sure that, as I got older, I became a preservationist.” Read the LA Conservancy's tribute here.

Ennis-Brown-House-Conference-52_2005-1-1200x1600 Diane Keaton speaks at the Ennis House. Image from LA Conservancy archives.

SB 79, Cheered and Booed

Meanwhile, on the building-for-the-future side of the ledger...

The champagne corks were popping this weekend in pro-housing circles in town. After keeping everyone in suspense, this past Friday, Governor Newsom signed SB 79. That’s the bill that overrides local zoning to permit taller and higher-density buildings within a half mile of select transit stops in highly urbanized areas across the state.

In the City of LA, that means about 150 stops where buildings close to subway stations and some bus stops could rise to nine stories and up to four stories at the furthest point within that half-mile radius. That means higher apartment buildings could land in low-rise or single-family neighborhoods.

This prospect has inflamed homeowners, historic preservation groups, and housing justice organizations anxious about gentrification. The bill was even opposed by Mayor Karen Bass, who ran for office on solving the housing crisis. The sticking point for her and many opponents was loss of local control over housing and land-use decisions, and fears that SB 79 would "diminish community input on planning and zoning and disproportionately impact low-resource neighborhoods.”

Ivy Station, seen from the Expo Line, Culver City, photo by Frances Anderton, IMG_0744 SB 79 mandates more apartments close to transit lines, like The Ivy in Culver City. Photo by Frances Anderton.

SB 79 was authored by State Senator Scott Wiener, a longtime housing advocate who has relentlessly fought to override "community input" that he sees as inherently "NIMBY," and to force the hand of cities resistant to meeting state-mandated housing increases. However, he revised the bill in response to objections. It wound up incorporating anti-displacement measures for people in existing apartment buildings, mandating a percentage of affordable units for low-income households in developments over 10 units, and allowing cities some flexibility to determine where the extra density is sited.

One of the concerns about 79’s impact is aesthetic. After all, when you drive on our thoroughfares these days, you can see an alarming number of clunky, rectilinear behemoths, blocking sunlight and views, resembling storage containers for humans. Moreover, many comprise costly rental studios and one-bedrooms that provide neither affordable homes for regular workers nor long-term residences for larger households.

So some housing advocates are taking up the issue of quality as well as quantity in housing. Eduardo Mendoza, a senior policy analyst at California YIMBY told KCRW, ”I honestly think that if housing does not look nice, people who are maybe housing agnostic are going to fight new housing development. Also, you know, (there's) just quality of life. Why can't we have a beautiful city like any other great city in the world?"

El Royale, by FA, IMG_3789 copy Tall can be beautiful in LA, like El Royale on Rossmore Avenue. Photo by Frances Anderton.

LA can, of course, build big and beautifully, both now and in the past (like El Royale, above). But one has to ask if zoning — which SB 79 reforms — is even the biggest obstacle to housing production right now. A recent L.A. Times article by Roger Vincent enumerated reasons apartment investors are fleeing the City of LA: high costs of land, insurance, interest rates, labor, materials, tariffs, city delays and rule changes, rebuilding after the fires… the list goes on.

Zoning reform might be just the start.

Join the conversation

We will discuss the constellation of crises impacting Los Angeles housing and Hollywood at a FORT: LA-hosted discussion later this month. Read about it below, along with many other Design Things To Do — a Festival Trail test run for 2028, a redesigned sports game for non-winningest people, the opening of Agnes Denes: The Future is Fragile, at the MAK Center (image, above), and the Architecture and Design Film Festival, at which "Space Architect" Constance Adams shares her thoughts about earth's wellbeing, just days before passing.

Design Things To Do

Play Not to Win
Multiform Sports Tournament
Thursday, October 16th, 4:30–6:00 PM 
625 La Fayette Park Pl, Los Angeles, CA 90057 (Basketball court)

The Multiform alternative sports tournament isn’t about winning or losing — it’s about playing together in new ways, says the fascinating Gabriel Fontana, artist in residence at Villa Albertine, who has set about redesigning sports, from the rules to the uniforms. Now you can test his concepts in the "Multiform" game taking place this Thursday.

It was co-created with youth from Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) and the LA County Department of Arts & Culture.

Click here for details.

Multiform Workshop at the Pijp primary school, Rotterdam, 2025. Photo- Giulia Virgara Multiform Workshop at the Pijp primary school, Rotterdam, 2025. Photo: Giulia Virgara.

Make Materials Matter
The Art Walk & Roll Festival
Downtown Culver City and Helms Design District
Saturday, October 18th, 11:00 AM–6:00 PM

One of the magnets at the Venice Architecture Biennial was the Danish Pavilion, curated by Søren Pihlmann. The building itself was the subject, being in need of “both climate protection and an overall upgrade.” So Pihlman filled the space with the structure’s own materials to model regeneration while making an aesthetic out of piles of masonry.

You can learn more by viewing Søren Pihlmann: Make Materials Matter, a documentary that will be screened all day this Saturday at the Helms Design Center, co-presented with the Architecture & Design Film Festival (see below.)

It is part of a line-up of art and design shows and activities hosted by the Helms Design District as part of the annual Culver City Art Walk & Roll Festival. Other attractions include spooky crafting for Halloween and the popular Sunshine Makers Market.

Click here for all the info.

Danish Pavilion, IMG_1913 copy Inside the Danish Pavilion. Photo by Frances Anderton.

FORT Twofer

Jazz and Gin at the Henry O. Bollman House
Saturday, October 18th, 4:00–7:00 PM
Hollywood; address shared on ticket purchase.

Is LA in Freefall?
Public conversation, online
Wednesday October 29th, 12:00 PM

It is last call for tickets for the FORT: LA annual fundraiser, taking place inside the rarely accessible Henry O. Bollman house, designed by Lloyd Wright. This two-story home is thought to be Wright’s first house in which he used the experimental textile, or “knit-block” system he developed.

Funds raised go to FORT's year-round programming, including its 2025 series of talks and a design competition following the fires, Heart of LA. In the next outing for that series, I will talk with experts about the state of LA. Is the city deep in disaster mode, or merely going through one of its cyclical busts before the next boom?

Click here for tickets to the fundraiser and here to sign up for the talk.

Henry O. Bollman residence. Photo by Tim Street-Porter, courtesy of Crosby Doe

Under the Influence 012
Saturday, October 18th, 6:00 PM–8:00 PM
Addresses for both events will be emailed to ticket holders.

One of the classics of LA midcentury housing is the Mar Vista Tract, or Modernique Model Homes, designed by Gregory Ain in collaboration with Joseph Johnson and Alfred Day in 1948.

You can get to experience it at a combination of talk and tour organized by LA Forum, featuring a members' tour of Mar Vista House and its addition with architect Kevin Daly, followed by a talk between Swedish architect Per-Johan Dahl and UCLA cityLAB director Dana Cuff at one of the Ain-designed residences now transformed by owner-architect Takashi Yanai into a cultural space.

The combo of talent and location here adds up to what will doubtless be a fascinating take on the Forum's series meditating on the long arm of Modernism.

Click here for information.

Image courtesy LA Forum.

Agnes Denes: The Future is Fragile
MAK Center for Art and Architecture
Opening Reception, Saturday, October 18th, 7:00 PM
835 Kings Rd, West Hollywood, CA 90069

Also opening this busy Saturday, October 18th, at The MAK Center for Art and Architecture in West Hollywood: Agnes Denes: The Future is Fragile, an exhibition of key works by the Hungarian-born American conceptual artist, "that challenge our relationship to land, resources, and ecological stewardship."

Her famed site-specific works include Wheatfield - A Confrontation in Manhattan (echoed later in LA in Not A Cornfield, by Metabolic Studio).

Click here for information.

Wheatfield - A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan
© All photographs by Agnes Denes

It's a (W)rap!
AIA/LA Design Awards
Wednesday, October 22nd, 6:00–10:00 PM
(W)rapper, 5790 W Jefferson Blvd, Los Angeles, 90016

The AIA/LA (American Institute of Architects) hands out awards annually, but rarely in a building that outshines many of the entries. This year’s ticketed event takes place on the 9th floor of Eric Owen Moss’s (W)rapper, surely the most distinctive high-rise to have appeared in LA in years, and which mysteriously aroused the ire of critics. To paraphrase Dr. Samuel Johnson’s famous quote about London, "When a man (sic) is tired of ballsy, eccentric LA architecture, he is tired of life."

I’ll be there to hand out some of the prizes, with Press Play host Madeleine Brand and BYDesign's Mike Chapman. Among awardees will be AIA/LA Gold Medal winners Alice Kimm and John Friedman. Expect good food and rooftop partying.

Click here to purchase tickets.

The (W)rapper, seen from South Photo by Frances Anderton

Architecture on Film
Architecture and Design Film Festival
Culver Theater, 9500 Culver Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232
Wednesday, October 22nd, Sunday, October 26th, Monday, October 27th

So often, architecture is the silent bit player in a live-action movie. At the Architecture and Design Film Festival, founded by Kyle Bergman, the buildings and design are the stars.

ADFF comes to LA for three nights at Culver Theater. The line-up of 12 films, selected by Bergman out of hundreds of entries, includes some goodies, such as Identity: A Czech Graphic Design Love Story, with colorful auctioneer Nicholas Lowry; and the very moving The Space Architect, capturing NASA designer Constance Adams as she reflects, while in the final stages of cancer, on lessons learned from space about preserving health of the planet.

I will talk afterward with "Space Architect" director Rebecca Carpenter and new SCI-Arc director Winka Dubbeldam; that’s just one of several Q&As to follow some of the films.

Click here for the full schedule and tickets.

Nicholas Lowry tours Prague via its typography. Image courtesy ADFF.

See You at Festival Trail Hub!
Jerry Moss Plaza, The Music Center

Grand Ave Arts: All Access
Grand Avenue from Temple – 6th Street
October 25th, 11:00 AM–4:00 PM

Christopher Torres, landscape architect and masterplanner, and collaborators Hilary Norton, Eli Lipmen, and Alfred Fraijo, have a big idea for 2028: a Festival Trail that would connect communities with Olympic venues, pop-up neighborhood plazas, Metro mobility hubs, and new housing.

They have created a prototypical "Festival Trail Hub" that you can come check out next Saturday on the Jerry Moss Plaza at The Music Center.

It's just one of the attractions at Grand Ave Arts: All Access, when arts and cultural institutions along Grand Avenue open their doors to visitors for free workshops, performances, tours, and interactive events. Think The Broad, MOCA, the Music Center, DATALAND at The Grand LA (Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç), and much more..

At this "first iteration of a Festival Trail community hub," you will find a built shade structure, art via augmented reality, and a tree giveaway. I'll be there at 1:00 PM to moderate a panel discussion with LA leaders, including Councilmember Nithya Raman, about enhancing the urban experience at upcoming mega-events.

Click here for Grand Ave Arts: All Access and here for The Festival Trail Hub.

Still from moving imagery of the Festival Trail. Courtesy Agency Artifact.

What I'm Digging

The Communal Table as Public Space

Communal dining can be a source of anguish — think, high school cafeteria — or a timeless pleasure: wedding feasts, summer beer gardens, etc. It can also be a high-concept pop-up or living site-specific artwork, as shown in these delightful dining interventions in public space, in ArchDaily.com. Below, The Dining Room, designed by the art and design collaborative i/thee, “marks the beginning of a broader master plan for the city of Bondurant, Iowa, envisioning a network of public "rooms" along a trail encircling Lake Petocka.” Lovely.

Photo by Neal Lucas Hitch

Onwards and Upwards

It's true, we get old. As one who is creeping up there, I've become more curious about those who age well (see Diane Keaton, above), and, health permitting, with a sense of fun, like the merry band of self-appointed detectives in Richard Osman's “Thursday Murder Club” series. Osman himself tells the NYT's Michel Cottle why he chose to use "cosy" English murder mysteries as the vehicle for exploring difficult topics like dementia and medically assisted dying. He shares the philosophical insights he's gained along with the fandom that has retirees he runs into pitching deathly concepts, like a woman named Sue who told him that in her retirement community, “There’s a balcony in the concert hall. You could push someone off that and kill them.” I said, “OK, Sue, let’s try that.” His latest in the series, The Impossible Fortune, is just out.

Section of the cover of Osman's latest Thursday Murder Club mystery.

Creepy Kitty!

I can't wait to check out Twinkle's ancestors at Fierce! The Story of Cats, the Natural History Museum's current exhibition of cat evolution from sabertooths to household kitty cats, and their "deep connection with humans." There are even some screenings of seasonally spooky, cat-themed movies such as Roger Corman's The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), on October 23rd. Podcaster and filmmaker Sapphire Sandalo and guest Kaitlyn Graña, Mother of Mystics will discuss the "intriguing role of the film’s mysterious feline presence and the depiction and misrepresentations of black cats in culture." Oooh!

Well, that's it for this week. Thank you as always for reading.

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.