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      Downtown, by Todd Gannon

Like many Angelinos, I come from the Midwest. And in Midwestern cities like the Cleveland of my birth, when somebody says Downtown, everybody knows what is being talked about. Downtown is where the tall buildings are.
Los Angeles, of course, could … | +

 06.01.2010 ||



  Beckman Auditorium, CalTech    Forum Issue 7: Late Moderns

Edited by Tom Marble
After the Second World War, cities devastated by the conflict had to rebuild themselves. Los Angeles, devastated by self-inflicted Urban Renewal, began the rebuilding process soon after. This issue examines the several ways in which corporate architects … | +

 01.07.2010 |||||||



      Forum Issue 6: A Note on Downtown

Edited by Vinayak Bharne and Alan A. Loomis
After the Second World War, cities devastated by the conflict had to rebuild themselves. Los Angeles, devastated by self-inflicted Urban Renewal, began the rebuilding process soon after. This issue examines the several ways … | +

 01.06.2010 |||||||||||||



      Forum Issue 5: Parks

Edited by Alan A. Loomis and Lize Mogel
With summer upon us, and the outdoors beckoning, the Forum turns its attention to parks and recreational landscapes in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Through a series of essays, projects, and case studies, we … | +

 01.05.2010 ||||||||||||||



      Forum Issue 4: Consuming the City

Edited by Alan A. Loomis
In the context of the Dead Malls competition, the winter edition of the Forum’s newsletter examines the landscape and infrastructure of commerce. Covering both new and old shopping malls and districts, it provides a framework for … | +

 01.04.2010 |||||||||



      Forum Issue 3: Rethinking Housing

Edited by Barbara Lamprecht
The spring issue of the Forum’s online newsletter on housing explores innovative and alternative housing in the past and in the present, examining failures as well as successes.
Articles:
The Case Against Standardization
by Morris Newman

Downtown : Housing LA’s Future
by … | +

 01.03.2010 ||||||||



      Forum Issue 2: Gehry and Moneo Under Construction

Edited by Tim Durfee and Jack Burnett-Stuart

Our second newsletter is now online. This time we address two new Los Angeles landmarks: Raphael Moneo’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall.
ARTICLES:
Ruins and Reincarnations: the Old … | +

 01.02.2010 |||||||||



      House, Housing Home : LA’s Domestic Design Challenge By Jennifer Dunlop

On Thursday evening, January 31, 2002, architect John Kaliski moderated the second in the Forum’s “Slippery When Wet” panel discussions, this one focused on housing and held at Woodbury’s downtown facility. It was a riveting and illuminating evening for two … | +

 03.19.2006 |||||||||||||



      The Act Of Dwelling : WM Seeks Pots And Pans By Barbara Lamprecht

To “dwell,” in affordable housing parlance, is an expensive proposition.
A few months after it was finished, I returned to the renovated Single-Room-Occupancy, 50-unit complex I worked on. Originally designated as a “motel” of 60 rooms each with a vanity area … | +

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  Mission Meridian Model    The Case Against Standardization by Morris Newman

If an architect had designed the human hand, Bill Mitchell told his students at UCLA in the early 1980s, all the fingers would be equally long.
Everybody laughs when they hear that joke because they instantly recognize its truth: There is … | +

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      The Well Traveleds

1. In the hullabaloo surrounding proposed changes to the historic Huntington Hartford Gallery at Two Columbus Circle, Ada Louise Huxtable, longtime architectural critic for the New York Times, famously dismissed the Edward Durrell Stone landmark as possessing “dubious architectural … | +

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      From Paradise To Parking Lot By Lawrence Culver

The rise of modern Los Angeles since the late nineteenth century has been inextricably connected to its reputation as a place of recreation. It might seem likely that a city sold as the playground of the world, with an … | +

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      Exposition Park, South Los Angeles, Case Study by Alan Loomis

Los Angeles arguably has only two parks of the Beaux-Arts / Olmsted tradition – large, cultivated gardens in urban settings, home to iconic cultural institutions: Hancock Park and Exposition Park. However, both parks are significantly smaller than similar parks nationwide.
Furthermore, … | +

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      3 Acres On The Lake : DuSable Park, Chicago By Laurie Palmer

“3 Acres on the Lake” is a public art project that solicited speculative proposals for a tiny piece of land called DuSable Park, on the shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the river in downtown Chicago. Plans have … | +

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      Whose Turf is This Anyways? Julie Eizenberg, John Given, Roger Sherman, Doug Suisman

On June 17, 2003 the collaborative LAH*UB [Los Angeles H* Urban Bureau] sponsored a panel discussion at Gallery 727 on the subject of public space in downtown Los Angeles, in conjuction with their Civic Park Proposals competition/exhibit (see Issue 5). … | +

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      All Shiny and New : Disney Hall and Downtown by Carol Mcmichael Reese

“Disney Hall finally puts Downtown on the map and gives Downtown something of substance that was missing. Still, we have to ask: should the focus Downtown be on creating monuments or connective tissue? Downtown needs walkable streets, … | +

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      Civic Park Proposals, Downtown Los Angeles : Project by Ken Ehrlich / L=ah*ub

Thomas Guide page 634 F-4
The Los Angeles H* Urban Bureau (LAH*UB), an L.A. based collaborative of artists and architects, actively experiments with modes of research in downtown Los Angeles. In the last year, we have focused almost all of our … | +

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      “It’s Not as Complicated as People Think” : Essay and Case Studies Terence Young

Many of the residents of America’s older central cities want more Greenspace in their own and their families’ lives. They crave the cooling, stress-relieving beauty of street trees, the relaxation and recreation offered by neighborhood parks, and the chance to … | +

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      Using Parks to Make and Urban Metropolis : Essay by Stephanie Pincetl

Los Angeles is well known as the nation’s capital for air pollution, traffic congestion, and sprawl. It is perhaps less well known as the second densest city in the country, at over 8 persons an acre [1]. Additionally, its lack … | +

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      Augustus Hawkins Park, South Los Angeles : Case Study by Lize Mogel

Thomas Guide page 674 F-5
The Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park is widely touted as an urban greening success story. For almost a century, the site, at the corner of Slauson and Compton Avenues in a heavily industrialized corridor, was a … | +

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      Confluence Park, Los Angeles : Case Study by Jennifer Price

Thomas Guide page 594 J-6
Welcome to one of the ugliest, most devastated spots on the Los Angeles River – that is, if you can find it. The confluence of the river and the Arroyo Seco can take some effort to … | +

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      Virginia Avenue Park, Santa Monica : Case Study by Michael Pinto

Thomas Guide page 671 H-1
The narrative of lost public life and public space is prevalent throughout Los Angeles. It may be valid to say that public space has largely been commodified and rarely becomes truly public in that some type … | +

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      Baldwin Hills Park, Crenshaw : Case Study by Therese Kelly

Thomas Guide pages 672-673
One afternoon shortly after I first moved to Los Angeles, I took a new way home from LAX and found myself in a strangely surreal, yet somehow perfectly Angelean landscape. Two green hills rose up from either … | +

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      Les Parcs & Los Parques : New Parks & New Natures by Chris Kahle

What better place to study parks than Paris? Well, maybe Los Angeles!
As an urban geographer, I am lucky enough to research urban open space and parks. My luck was extended when I was invited to Paris as a participant with … | +

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      William Pereira by Scott Johnson

Some years after Bill’s death, Allen Temko, the longtime architectural critic of the San Francisco Chronicle and modernist devotee, reminded me of one of his favorite celebrity lines: “Bill Pereira was Hollywood’s idea of an architect.” He was, of course, … | +

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      Public Green by Lize Mogel

The “public green”, or town commons, was originally a shared piece of land used for grazing livestock. In 17th and 18th century New England, this type of public space was usually the center of community activity. The public green is … | +

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      Ruins and Reincarnations: the Old and New Cathedrals by Vinayak Bharne

If we liberate ourselves from the myopia that there is a single legitimate sensibility to measure the spirit of our time, we will hear a dialogue between the two cathedrals in Los Angeles. The emerging new cathedral is poised to … | +

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      The Battle of Bunker Hill or A Grand Avenue Revisited by John Dale

Terms of Engagement, Urban Design in Los Angeles at the Millennium, on view last winter at the Luckman Gallery, featured several schemes for reinterpreting Grand Avenue as an animated pedestrian precinct in the heart of downtown. One, by a team … | +

  



      Continuity of Service : The Cathedral and Concert Hall by Barbara Lamprecht

Thou has ordered all things in measure and number and weight.” (Solomon 11:2)
“The entire sanctuary is thus pervaded by a wonderful and continuous light entering through the most sacred windows.” (Abbot Suger, bef. 1150. De consecratione eccesiae sancti Dionysii. In … | +

  



      Mall Chicken [Oxygen Bars And Other Observations] By Christina Polyzoides

The best chicken on the east side of Los Angeles is at the Glendale Galleria, a dish of the Bulgarian variety that I have come to call “Mall Chicken”. The International Grill is located in the food court in the … | +

 03.18.2006 |



      Lost In Chinatown By Mimi Zeiger

What happens when the currency of the late twentieth century and now the burgeoning twenty-first, the “real” telescopes back in on itself? When the all the Osbornes and Survivors and Anna Nicole Smiths lose the sardonic smirk and implode in … | +

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      The Once And Future Mall By Alan A Loomis

Near the end of 2001 no fewer than three urban malls opened their doors to the shoppers of greater Los Angeles. These malls – and at least another three are in the final stages of construction or planning – … | +

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      Cityplace : The Good, The Bad, And The Monotony By Michael Bohn

As a child, my first experience visiting downtown Long Beach was filled with danger and excitement. My mother was taking me to the YMCA building for my first swimming lesson. This structure, even from a child’s perspective, was a beautiful … | +

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      Design Criterea for Shopping Malls by Tom Marble

This article is in adobe acrobat .pdf format, also readable by the Mac OS X preview program.
download article

Back to Forum Issue 4: Consuming the City

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      Anywhere Comes to Hollywood by John Southern

The shopping mall is perhaps one of the most cataclysmic typologies of architecture to evolve in the Twentieth Century. What the skyscraper did for the urban commercial landscape, the mall has done for suburban retail. Malls successfully weaned customers away … | +

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      Shopping on Broadway : Downtown Los Angeles by Sonia Rivas

The street bustles with people; music roars out from the stores; salespeople urge you into their shops and merchandise spills out into the sidewalks. This is Broadway Street in the historic downtown Los Angeles. Once the home to shops like … | +

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      The Curator Against the City by Paulette Singley

“US museums: growing pleasures – or pains”
The Artnewspaper.com
Ms Rich [Director of LACMA] doubts that the project would involve the demolition of every existing structure on the campus: “Some would like to do that. I think it’s pretty unrealistic.” She feels … | +

  



      Cathedrals of the Culture Industry by Kazys Varnelis

This article is the second in a series for the journal Pasajes de Arquitectura y Critica [Madrid] examining the relationship of a spectacularized contemporary architecture, the city, and capital. The other two are: “Hallucination in Seattle. Frank Gehry’s Experience Music … | +

  



      Sorry, Rudy (part 2) by David Leclerc

It has already been one year since the Wolfe House, Schindler’s masterpiece of the late 1920s, built in Avalon on Catalina Island, has been demolished. Having had a close encounter with the house a couple of years before its death, … | +

  



      Hope or Hype: A Residential Community Downtown by Tatiana Hegleman

Beyond the concept of buildings containing living space, housing embraces an idea of a community environment in which the streets of the city and the space between the housing become as important as the units themselves. This idea is particularly … | +

 08.22.2005 



      Downtown … Again by Peter Zellner

downtown… again
peter zellner
Spectacle
The future of Downtown Los Angeles is in play again. The Grand Avenue Project is the biggest public re-development spectacle to come to town in a long while. Under the banner “Re-Imagining Grand Avenue, Creating a Center for … | +

  



      Plans Come and They Go, Or Downtown is Almost OK by Robert S. Harris

plans come and go, or downtown is almost ok
robert s. harris
Almost a decade ago the Los Angeles City Council unanimously endorsed the Downtown Strategic Plan (DSP). Within a short time, Mayor Bradley completed his final term of office, the District … | +

  



      Victor Gruen Today by Daniel Herman

Though he is better known for his shopping malls of the 1950’s and 60’s, Victor Gruen spent the earlier part of his career designing stores. As M. Jeffrey Hardwick’s recent biography of Gruen, Mall Maker (2004), tells it, Gruen began his … | +

 09.11.2004 



      Westward Transitions by Daniel Paul

The Early Development of the Late-Modern Glass Skin in the Collaborative Works of Cesar Pelli and Anthony Lumsden
In 1964, the large, multi-service, Los Angeles architectural firm of Daniel Mann Johnson, & Mendenhall (DMJM) hired Cesar Pelli as the first Director … | +

  



      Built by Becket by Alan Hess

The mid decades of the twentieth century were the heyday of Imperial California. The Golden State’s population swelled, its youth revolutionized the nation’s commerce and culture, its entertainment industry colonized the globe, and its aerospace industry ruled the future.
Like all … | +

  



      Embracing Late Modern by Kazys Varnelis

Situated between the domesticated modernism of the Case Study Houses and the Santa Monica School neo-avant-garde, Los Angeles’s late modern architects, big firms like Victor Gruen Associates, Luckman and Pereira, Albert C. Martin and Associates, and Welton Becket did much … | +

  



      Goodbye, Modern

The past year has seen the demolition of significant works by LA’s best known modernists: Schindler’s Wolfe House and Neutra’s Maslon House. The Forum presents laments for recently demolished houses by David Leclerc and Barbara Lamprecht, authorities on Schindler and … | +

 09.09.2002 



      LACMA On Fire

In response to the recent superstar competition for the redesign of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Forum presents a special feature on LACMA, LACMA on Fire: The Curator against the City by Forum board member Paulette … | +

 08.05.2002 



      Death In The Family By Barbara Lamprecht

13 April, 2002
Richard Neutra designed a villa for Luella and Samuel Maslon in the upscale resort city of Rancho Mirage. Samuel died in 1988, Luella in July 2001. They were from Minnesota. This was their winter home.
Escrow on the $2.45 … | +

 04.18.2002 



      Downtown : Housing LA’s Future by Amy Anderson

Downtown could be Los Angeles’ next suburb. Not in the negative way that suburbs are commonly viewed, with sprawling development and isolated uses, but in the old-fashioned way, as a new residential community suffused with hope for the future.
Where Can … | +

 03.20.2002 ||



      Wanted By Everyman : Buildings By Smith And Others By Jack Burnett-Stuart

Currently nearing completion in the Little Italy area of downtown San Diego, the forty-unit Essex is Smith and Others’ most ambitious building to date. With its four “funnels” towering over the adjacent 5 freeway, this building is surely a landmark … | +

 03.19.2002 ||



      Same Difference : Baldwin Hills And Aliso Villages By Liz Falletta

In 2001, Baldwin Hills Village, a private garden city development now called Village Green, was given National Historic Landmark status by the federal government while Aliso Village, a public housing project, was declared a slum and torn down in preparation … | +

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      The City’s New Role In Housing : An Informal Chat With The Mayor’s LA Business Team Leader Jonathan Kevles

It’s not often that small architecture events are noted in the calendars of politicians, let alone attended. At L.A. Forum’s recent impassioned panel discussion on housing, (see Jennifer Dunlop’s report), the presence of Jonathan Kevles, the Director of Economic Development … | +

  



      Scharoun / Mies : Gehry / Moneo ? by Jack Burnett-Stuart

Reading Architektur als Komposition, a recently published book by the German architect Mike Wilkens, my attention was caught by his descriptions of visits he made to the construction sites of Mies’ Nationalgalerie and Scharoun’s Philharmonie while he was studying in … | +

 03.03.2002 



      Meiered: Moca’s “What’s Shakin’: New Architecture in L. A.” by Joe Day

An exhibit of eight much-anticipated public projects in Los Angeles, “What’s Shakin’: New Architecture in LA,” has just finished its run at the Geffen Contemporary and the Pacific Design Center. Though well advertised and attended, with a media campaign including … | +

 02.11.2002 |||||||||||||||||



      Schindler Shelter: Background and Arguments

Playground
Fear dictated originally the form and spirit of the house. The behavior of our ancestors was overshadowed by constant defense reactions against real and imagined enemies. . . . [but nowadays] . . . The earth, the sky, and the … | +

 11.07.2001 ||



      Site Analysis: Risks and Opportunities

Demographic Factors: No longer out in the country, King’s Road is today largely lined with three- and four-story apartment buildings, many of which are built virtually property-line to property-line, resulting in a rather high-density environment. Residents are fall into two … | +

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      Schindler Shelter: The Proposal by Dave Hullfish Bailey

If we speak of civilisation, we mean that part of human enterprise which in sheer self-defence struggles to mould human surroundings to respond to its needs . . . The only point of view from which civilisatory … | +

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      Schindler Shelter: Commentary by Michael Darling

Dave Hullfish Bailey: “Gimme Shelter”
by Michael Darling
For Dave Hullfish Bailey, everything springs from The Word. Not unlikely a by-product of his prior theological training, the intense scrutiny he directs at language has a tendency to bear down on … | +

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      Introduction – Re-coronating King’s Road by David Hullfish Bailey

When Schindler built the Kings Road residence, it was still possible to conceive of Los Angeles as an Edenic Last Chance: a terminus on a distant and fertile shore where the negative social conditions of Europe and … | +

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      Dave Hullfish Bailey’s Schindler Shelter

Dave Hullfish Bailey’s giant bamboo held down by rope shelter was the highlight of the recent 20/35 Vision show at the MAK Center at the Schindler House. The kitchen outfitted with emergency supplies was another Bailey installation. The Forum’s website … | +

 11.06.2001 ||||



      Sorry, Rudy by David Leclerc

a visit to moca’s “the architecture of r.m. schindler”
The long overdue exhibition of Rudolph Schindler’s work in his adopted city, Los Angeles, is currently on view at MOCA until June. One could only welcome and support MOCA’s initiative to organize … | +

 05.03.2001 ||||||



      A Model Staging Area or, Why Ann Bergren’s Thesis is so Beautiful by Rachel Allenny

Ann Bergren had taught architecture in Los Angeles at SCI-Arc and UCLA since 1987. In 1996 she interrupted this influential career to attend Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Her M. Arch. thesis, a Theater for Architecture and Dance, extends some … | +

 02.18.2001 |||||||



      Richard Koshalek on The Exhibition “At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture”

interview by michael darling
Michael Darling interviews Richard Koshalek, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, about “At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture,” an exhibition he organized with MOCA Curator Elizabeth Smith. The exhibition … | +

 12.09.1999 ||||||||



      The Life and Death of Great American Freeways : The 710 Case Study

by John Dutton
The highway is perhaps the most ambivalently celebrated feature of the post-war American landscape. On one hand, it is heralded as a symbol of progress and growth, and on the other criticized as a symbol of insensitive urban … | +

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      Mike Davis, On Anything but the Ecology of Fear

Mike Davis interview by Joe Day
Just before departing on a promotional junket for Ecology of Fear (Metropolitan, 1998), Mike Davis took a couple of hours one morning to answer some questions from the Forum. He had just completed a 2 … | +

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      The New Aliso Village and the Ideology of the Fresh Start

by jack burnett-stuart
Rookeries and Model Dwellings
In nineteenth century London, a campaign for housing reform succeeded in completely liquidating the notorious rookeries, old pockets of the inner city that housed large numbers of the urban poor in the meanest, most crowded … | +

  



      Photovoltaics for the Relievable City

a project by m. claudia montesinos

This investigation begins by asking why photovoltaic technology has not played an engaging and practical role in the architecture and infrastructure of Los Angeles, a city wealthy in the resource of solar energy. A series … | +

  



      LA Forum Newsletter – Summer Reading Issue 1997

Trafficking in Marginalia
For this issue we compiled a reading list of suggestions from our friends and colleagues. As the titles came in, we noticed that the overwhelming majority bore no direct relation to conventional architectural discourse. It may be the … | +

 06.01.1997 ||||



      Post-Modern Cities and Spaces – Reviewed by Grahame Shane

REVIEW: Post-Modern Cities and Spaces
Edited by Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson
Reviewed by Grahame Shane

After a period of drought, there is a welcome flood of good textbooks and readers on the post-modern city. This new literature incorporates theories critical of the … | +

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      The Architecture of Hollywood by Tom Marble

Chapter 5
SCOPE AND GENERAL
Section 501.
This chapter prescribes general design requirements applicable to all architecture regulated by this code.
Section 502.
The following definitions give meaning to certain terms related to this code:
Architecture. Structures relevant to a given population.
Plot. The mechanical arrangement of … | +

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  Frank Israel in Paris. Photo Courtesy of Barbara Callas.    In Memoriam: FDI by John Dutton

We lost Franklin David Israel early in the morning, Monday, June 10th. He turned 50 last fall, and had battled AIDS for twelve years with resolve and courage that became so engrained, so matter-of-fact, that one often took his survival … | +

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      Glass, Beyond the Looking by Joe Day

REVIEW: Vision and Visuality
Hal Foster, Editor
Dia Art Foundation
Discussions in Contemporary Culture, no. 2
Bay Press 1988.
and
Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances
Lynne Cooke and Peter Wollen, Editors
Dia Art Foundation
Discussions in Contemporary Culture, no. 10
Bay Press 1995.
The sensations of light and color are produced … | +

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      Moshing in the Surrealist Pit by Kevin O’brien

Review: Compulsive Beauty by Hal Foster

Compulsive Beauty
Hal Foster
MIT Press
1996 (PB)
Surrealism has been rediscovered. In the avalanche of this renewed interest arrives Hal Foster’s book Compulsive Beauty. Foster proposes a psychological analysis of Surrealism via Freud, but fails to understand the … | +

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      Summer Reading Bibliography

A bibliography of books being read by Forum Board Members and other recommendations.

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      LA Forum Newsletter – December 1995: Urban Landscapes

Lesley Marlene Siegel documents the personalization of an ubiquitous element in Los Angeles’ urban landscape.
Four architects – John Chase, John Kaliski, Mohsen Mostafavi, and John Dutton, set out parameters for urban design in the face of late capitalism.
Gary Strang proposes … | +

 12.01.1995 |||||||||||||



      DMV/AIA by Joe Day

The American Institute of Architects has a window of opportunity in Los Angeles that it has not enjoyed in the last twenty years. For a variety of reasons, few having much to do with the AlA. young designers in California … | +

 05.01.1994 ||||



      On Broadway: Downtown Los Angeles by Robert Adams

LA Forum Newsletter – May 1994: Ruminations on the places, buildings, shops and people of Downtown Los Angeles, on and off Broadway.

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      Cyburbia: L.A. As the New Frontier, or Grave? by Fred Dewey

L.A. has long been boosterized as a kind of paradise for commerce and fantasy. It has also been lamented for its lack of a sense of community, for cars out of control, people’s retreat into isolation, and the privatization of … | +

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  Advertisement for Splinter #8, Virtues of Reality    Architects, Architecture, and Activism? by David Jensen

This article is an attempt to outline some of the current work being produced by architects and activists who are responding to concrete social, political, and economic changes, from Canadian Zine Splinter to local Los Angeles activists.

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  Glare & the Antic Architecture Cinema, Splinter #4    Glare & the Antic Architecture Cinema, Splinter #4

Excerpt from the architecture zine Splinter #4: Glare & the Antic Architecture Cinema,
Summer 1991, Barry Isenor + Kenneth Hayes, Editors.
There was an arresting moment in a film we saw recently. Beyond swirling blue and black images of desolate industrial housing … | +

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  Editorial Excerpt Splinter #1, Antic Architecture    Excerpt from Splinter #1 Antic Architecture

Antic architecture goes against the grain, only that which embodies power, whether that of the Medicis or of MacDonaIds. Architecture has served power and in return has been head-locked by it. Similarly, the institutions that define and support architecture; the … | +

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      LA Forum Newsletter – May 1994

Los Angeles Urbanism

THE AIA CONVENTION COMES TO TOWN: David Jensen and Joe Day take issue with the state of the profession. Robert Adams presents our own Broadway District with new eyes. Fred Dewey describes the consequences of ‘Cyburbia.’

 08.01.1993 ||||||



      The Ecology of Fantasy by Margaret Crawford

An essay describing the relationship between theme parks and modern American urbanism. This essay discusses how Reyner Banham’s autopia acts as a device for facilitating the melding of Jean Baudrillard’s hyper-reality, as embodied by themed environments such as Disneyland’s Main Street, into the true reality of urban Los Angeles.

01.01.1988 ||||||



      Swimming to Suburbia: Some Thoughts on the New City and How it Came to be That Way by Craig Hodgetts

L.A.’s streets and avenues are stitched together from a mosaic of discrete city grids which are discontinuously linked by dislocations, swerving axes and polar rotations. These grids open vistas, frame trivialities and reveal anomalies. It is a system of altercations and inconsistencies—of thoughtless breadth and pragmatic anticipation which has bred, albeit carelessly, the culture of cruising, hatchbacks and convenience corners which exemplify the present vision of the future city.

 01.01.1987 ||