© James P Miller

The Case Study House Program produced some of the most iconic architectural projects of the 20^th Century, but none more iconic than or as famous as the Stahl House, also known as Case Study House #22 by Pierre Koenig.  The modern residence overlooks Los Angeles from the Hollywood Hills. It was completed in 1959 for Buck Stahl and his family. Buck Stahl had envisioned a modernist glass and steel constructed house that offered panoramic views of Los Angeles when he originally purchased the land for the house in 1954 for $13,500.  Stahl had originally begun to excavate and take on the duties of architect and contractor; it was not until 1957 when Stahl hired Pierre Koenig to take over the design of the family’s residence.

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Courtesy of Constantin Boincean, Ralph Bertram and Aleksandra Danielak

Project Umbrella by architects Constantin Boincean, Ralph Bertram and Aleksandra Danielak has been awarded first place in the LA Cleantech Corridor and Green District Competition, presented by SCI-Arc and Architect’s Newspaper in partnership with the Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles, the Community Redevelopment Agency, along with other public and private sponsors.

More images and descriptions after the break. read more »

© Belzberg Architects

The 32,000 sqf Los Angeles’ Holocaust Museum, designed by Belzberg Architects, has just opened.  Sitting across from the Holocaust Memorial, the museum is the new face of the LAMH, the United States’ oldest holocaust museum which dates back to 1962.  To the unknowing passerby, one may not even notice the museum as Belzberg has decided to bury the museum underground – a move that not only preserves the parkland above but also creates a dynamic circulation route bringing people beneath the earth to remember those who experienced the Holocaust.

More images and more about the museum after the break. read more »

© Iwan Baan

Photographer Iwan Baan received the inaugural Julius Shulman Photography Award in Los Angeles on October 10th.  The Julius Shulman Institute at Woodbury University will honor the legacy of the renowned photographer during a series of events that coincide with the 100th anniversary of the day of his birth. The image.architecture.now exhibit is currently featuring Iwan Baan along with 9 photographers all whose work illuminates a range of explorations into documenting the experience of space.  This exhibit is at Ahmanson Main Space at Woodbury University until October 23rd.

Stephen H. Kanner FAIA (1955-2010)

The Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles and Kanner Architects (see their projects here) present a retrospective and official public memorial service for Stephen Kanner, FAIA, on November 4, 2010, from 7-10 pm. The show continues until Jan 16, 2011.

With his passing on July 2, after a short battle with pancreatic cancer, the Los Angeles architectural and design community loses one of its most prominent advocates. A thirdgeneration architect and principal of Kanner Architects, Stephen was a native Angelino known for his reinterpretation of Southern Californian modernism and for his unique imprint on LA’s urban landscape.

His contributions to the Los Angeles built environment reach from Santa Monica to East Los Angeles, as his firm completed more than 150 projects throughout the city. In addition, Kanner earned national and international stature with residential projects across the US and, most notably, PUMA retail stores worldwide.

Full press release after the break. read more »

Proposed Site for Broad's Museum. Photo credit: Bryan Chan

Back in May, when American philanthropist, Eli Broad, announced his plans to build a new museum in downtown Los Angeles, six invited top architects competed for the commission ( Rem Koolhaas, Herzog and de Meuron, Christian de Portzamparc, Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Foreign Office Architects).   Yesterday, Broad confirmed that Diller Scofidio + Renfro (one of just two invited firms who have not been awarded the Pritzker) will design the  120,000 sqf downtown museum. read more »

The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and The Architect’s Newspaper are today launching the Los Angeles Clean Tech Corridor and Green District Competition. The competition asks architects, landscape architects, designers, engineers, urban planners, students and environmental professionals to create an innovative urban vision for Los Angeles’ CleanTech Corridor, a several-mile-long development zone on the eastern edge of downtown LA.

The competition, which offers more than $11,000 in prize money, is presented with the Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles and the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles, which established the Clean Tech Corridor. It asks entrants to move beyond industrial uses; creating an integrated economic, residential, clean energy, and cultural engine for the city through architectural and urban strategies. Crucially, this competition will provide an open ideas forum for provocative, even revolutionary, new visions of LA’s urban fabric and infrastructure.

For more information go to the competition’s official website. Seen at Bustler.

Grand Prize: LAPD Administration Building / AECOM in a joint venture with Roth Sheppard Associates

A few weeks ago the LA Business Council hosted the 40th version of the LA Architectural Awards.

Selected by a jury of 10 notable design and building professionals, the winning projects cut across a wide range of building types, from commercial office spaces to affordable apartment complexes to sports arenas. The call for entries went out in December 2009 to more than 7,000 industry leaders. From the hundreds of submissions received, the jury selected 31 winning projects in 20 overall categories. All winning projects, except the “Best of LA Architects” award winners, are located within Los Angeles County. “Best of LA Architects” recognizes local architects for projects completed outside of Los Angeles County.

The Grand Prize went to the LAPD Administration Building by AECOM (in a joint venture with Roth Sheppard Associates), and we also find projects recently featured at ArchDaily such as the Hidden House by Standard Architecture, the Cherokee Lofts by Pugh + Scarpa, the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories  by John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects or the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics by Morphosis.

All the awarded projects after the break:

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© APHIDoIDEA

Using 4,000 paper cups and 15,000 staples, APHIoIDEA’s newest installation is gracefully suspended from the ceiling, creating a new spatial experience in previously un-utilized storefronts.  The architectural installation is part of PHANTOM GALLERIES, an organization that places temporary installations in vacant storefront windows throughout LA to instantly form a new public art gallery.

A video, more images/diagrams and more about the installation after the break. read more »

Professional Winners / First Place

The winning and honorable mention entries from the Dingbat 2.0 Competition were announced at the LA Forum’s Dingbat 2.0 Exhibition opening on Saturday, June 19th, at LA Forum Events at Woodbury Hollywood. There were eight professional winners and five student winners selected from over 80 entries from 18 countries (number of ‘winners’ includes honorable mentions in both categories). The work of the thirteen winners is being exhibited at the Dingbat 2.0 Exhibition through July 24th.

All the winners and honorable mentions after the break. For complete descriptions of each project, click here. read more »

Photo: Lawrence Anderson/Esto

Architects: FreelandBuck
Location: Venice Blvd, Los Angeles, USA
Client: Yvonne McDonald and Dean Harada
Contractor: Vandermeer Contractors
Proyect Year: 2010
Photography: Lawrence Anderson/Esto read more »

Formosa 1140

We are thrilled to announce that Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) will be receiving the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles Chapter’s (AIA|LA), Firm of the Year Award for 2010. The formal announcement is expected to be released in July. The AIA|LA Firm of the Year Award is given annually and recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture.

Over the years, LOHA projects have won a combined 18 national and local AIA awards, including the most recent AIA National Housing Award for Formosa 1140. You can see all the projects we’ve featured by LOHA here, including our interview with Lorcan O’Herlihy.

de LaB is proud to announce their first-ever fundraiser, City Listening II! On Saturday, June 26, de LaB and a fantastic roster of collaborators and sponsors will present an evening of stories about Los Angeles read by your favorite design, architecture and art writers from both sides of La Brea!

To buy tickets and find more about the event, click here.

© CO Architects

CO Architects continues its restoration, renovation, and modernization of the venerable Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) with an innovative expansion and re-imagination of the institution’s North Campus, which dates back to the 1920s. The $30-million project’s elements include a redesigned front façade with entry bridge, pedestrian-friendly terraces and communal areas, a new two-level car park, and a major landscape program encompassing 3.5-acres of recovered green spaces with programmed gardens and outdoor learning environments. The outdoor garden spaces are created in collaboration with landscape design firm Mia Lehrer + Associates. Currently under construction, the North Campus is set to open 2011/2012, and is overseen by project manager Cordell Corporation.

More images and full press release after the break. read more »

railLA, a joint effort between the Los Angeles Chapters of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and American Planning Association (APA), has launched a Call for Ideas/Venues about High-Speed Rail and its transformative impact on society and the built environment.

Entrants are encouraged to submit new and existing ideas, concepts, designs, plans, papers, videos, models, and other studies. The Call is intended to create a wealth of information about High-Speed Rail from around the world to be exhibited at selected venues through a separate Call for Venues.

A select group of submissions will be showcased at an opening exhibit in Downtown Los Angeles, the railLA website, and in various publications. A $2500 prize purse for the top five submissions will be announced at the opening exhibit.

More information on the competition’s official website. Seen at Death by Architecture.

Proposed Site for Broad's Museum. Photo credit: Bryan Chan

Eli Broad, an American philanthropist, is getting ready to design the newest home for his extensive art collection.  For his latest museum project, on the corner of Grand Avenue and 2nd Street in Los Angeles, Broad invited six of the professions’ leading minds to compete.  Resting across the street from Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Arata Isozaki’s 1986 Museum of Contemporary Art, Broad’s museum with include approximately 40,000 square feet of top-floor exhibition space, along with offices for the Broad Art Foundation.

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Martin Fenlon‘s rusted steel canopy was recently constructed in LA.   The canopy was a facade renovation that took the existing building and added a ‘tube frieze’ in place of typical canopy signage, where a band of undulating stainless steel tubes evoke the surface of the nearby ocean.  The approach provides a textured effect and adds to the industrial character of the area.

More images and more about the facade after the break. read more »

The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design proposes DINGBAT 2.0, an open, single-stage, international design competition, reconsidering Los Angeles’ ubiquitous dingbat apartment building for the 21st century. All designers, architects, artists, engineers, students, and other interested parties are fully eligible for participation in this competition.

The competition calls for the consideration of two design issues regarding the Dingbat and it’s impact on the urban fabric of Los Angeles. Two boards (digital-only submittal) will be required for the competition. One board will address the typology of the Dingbat at the scale of the individual building (are they to be retrofitted? replaced?), and the second board will consider the larger urban scale of an entire city block within a ‘Dingbat neighborhood’. Three separate sites in three distinct Los Angeles neighborhoods will be considered for the competition.

Seen at Death by Architecture. For complete information, visit the competition’s official website.

INABA, with Darien Williams, has developed a hypothetical proposal for the migratory distribution of the Hollywood sign across Los Angeles, titled “HLYWD”. The project will be on display as part of SUPERFRONT LA‘s upcoming show, UNPLANNED: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale.

The proposal will be on display until July 2. More images and architect’s description after the break. read more »

Designed by Aedas Sport, the innovative 75,000-seat stadium will be the first LEED-certified building in the NFL and will capture the luxury and drama of the world’s entertainment capital. The project anticipates completion for the 2013 season. Both the NFL and the client, Majestic Realty, are committed to making a progressive statement with this building and are exploring a number of initiatives that will make this the most environmentally progressive stadium in the U.S. Aedas Sport has employed the unique topography of the site to build the stadium into a hillside, reducing the steel structure by 40% and allowing at least two-thirds of the seating bowl to be built on grade.

More images and full architect’s description after the break. read more »