The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures by Renzo Piano Building Workshop is set to open this December in Los Angeles. Set along the Miracle Mile, the design consists of the renovation of the May Company department store located at the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire, as well as a new glass sphere addition that will house the 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater.
A $5,000 fellowship awarded for study of historic and architecturally significant residences in LA County. Reports and research findings, and other content developed by FORT Fellows, will be added to the Discovery Center and linked to Trails maps as applicable.
Parking spaces are nothing more than a paradox. It’s a parcel of land that’s so vacant but so crucial that it drives how a city is perceived and functions.
It’s a common reality of how building plans are only approved with adequate or surplus units of these vacant spaces. It’s no surprise our cities look like more parking and less of life at any time soon. This shows how parking spaces have Zero function but have a very inflated value associated with them.
The Los Angeles Department of City Planning has unveiled details on the restoration of the Streamline Moderne Firestone Building. First opened in 1938, the project operated until its closing in 2016. Built by the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, it was used as a retail outlet for the company’s tires and related automotive products, and the garage remained one of the flagship stores of the company’s operations in Los Angeles.
As 2019 winds down, we're taking a look ahead to the projects we're most looking forward to in 2020. With a mix of cultural and commercial programs, the designs are located across five continents, with many under construction for multiple years. Designed across a wide range of scales, they represent a mix of interconnected landscapes, museums, and the world's newest skyscrapers.
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Weiss/Manfredi have been selected to lead the new La Brea Tar Pits master planning in Los Angeles. The team's ‘Loops and Lenses’ concept was developed to create new connections between "the museum and the Park, between science and culture, and envisions the entire site as an unfolding place of discovery." The team will work with NHMLAC on a multi-year process of public engagement, master planning, design and construction on the Tar Pits’ 13-acre campus.
SPF:architects has topped out construction on WE3 at Water’s Edge, a six-story creative office building in Playa Vista. The 183,000 square foot structure along Silicon Beach encompasses four floors of open creative workspace, with upper floors of the structure wrapped in a “floating” perforated aluminum skin.
Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects have broken ground on a modular design for supportive housing in South Los Angeles. Dubbed Isla Intersections, the project is part of a triangular parcel of land next to the freeway being developed as LA’s first shared street. Designed with open public space and 54 homes for some of LA's most vulnerable residents, the project was made to explore the future of housing.
Can food form a better city - and vice versa? Prague's CAMP (Centre for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning) will search for the answers to this question during its FoodCAMP programme from December 2 to 6. Every evening of the week will explore a different layer of food - urban planning dynamics covering topics like the sustainable relationship between the city and countryside, urban gardening, restaurant design and street food. The programme includes movie screenings, talks, debates with foreign speakers like Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City, a kids’ workshop and a talk show.
Architect, educator and founding director of SCI-Arc, Ray Kappe, FAIA, passed away last week at the age of 92. Kappe experienced lung failure after battling pneumonia. As a renowned architect, Kappe designed more than 100 residences, pioneered a new approach to architectural education, and shaped both Los Angeles and California Modernism as we know it.
Shifts in technology reflect how designers are creating experiences of architecture and cities. New advances engender novel ways of working, and in turn, shape our design process. As a practice defined by pushing boundaries, experimenting with workflows, and embracing new design technologies, Morphosis has a forty-year history of enthusiastically wondering at the future.
Contemporary architecture is increasingly created as a product of the market. Human experience and natural systems are traded for convenience and the bottom dollar, resulting in buildings that become commodities rather than spaces for daily life. When architects SelgasCano set out to design the new Second Home in Los Angeles, they aimed to challenge the status quo. In doing so, the team created one of the city's most inspiring developments in recent memory.
Brooks + Scarpa and Plant Prefab have developed a new toolkit to address housing shortages. Scalable as an infill solution, the Nest toolkit can be configured in multiple ways using site types and typical lot sizes, or a combination of them. The toolkit was made to address LA’s shortage of supportive housing for the homeless and provide flexibility to meet the needs of a particular site, neighborhood, and bed count.
The Midnight Charette is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by architectural designers David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features a variety of creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions. A wide array of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes provide useful tips for designers, while others are project reviews, interviews, or explorations of everyday life and design. The Midnight Charette is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina are joined by Christopher Hawthorne, to discuss his transition to becoming the city's first Chief Design Officer of Los Angeles, how LA is preparing for the 2028 Olympics, strategies for solving LA's housing shortage, why multi-family projects in California often look the same, balancing community outreach and design, why Elon Musk's tunnel system is flawed, and much more.
