Under the Influence 013

Please join us for Under the Influence 013 — The event will take place at Salkin House, Echo Park, Los Angeles - 1430 Avon Terrace, Los Angeles, CA 90026

Parking is very limited. There is a very steep slope path to reach the house. 

Event hosted by Peter Blake Gallery. 

Under the Influence is a series of conversations that expands upon the concepts of Los Angeles Modernism. This radical movement rejected predetermined rules and embraced experimentation, striving for freedom of expression in all areas of culture. Modernism also catalyzed an interest in social equality, politics, healthy environments, new materials, and innovation, ushering design into a new and transformative era. The series brings together architects, artists, and designers from all over the world to engage in dialogue with local architects, landscape architects, and creatives in L.A.'s quintessential iconic modernist spaces. We aim to uncover the influence of this radical approach on today’s culture and will reflect on what we do next by bringing foreign and local voices into experimental and progressive conversations.

Two speakers are invited for each talk: one local and one from elsewhere. Each speaker will present their work, highlighting the experimental approach’s influence that Los Angeles Modernism set in motion. The presentation will be followed by a conversation among the speakers and with the audience.

Tickets: Non-Members $35, Members $20 and Students $15

Bios:

Ignacio G. Galán

Ignacio G. Galán is an architect and architectural historian. His work addresses questions of residence, citizenship, and kinship with a focus on nationalism, migration, and disability. He is the author of Furnishing Fascism (2025), editor of Architecture's Kinships (2026), and co-editor of Radical Pedagogies (2021) and After Belonging (2016). He has exhibited his work at various venues, including the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2025), the international selection of the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014 and 2021), and the Center for Architecture (2022), and has also served as curator of the Oslo Architecture Triennale (2016). His articles have appeared in JSAH, JDH, JAE, modernism+modernity, and Journal of Architecture, amongst others. His work as an architect has been recognized with the Emerging Voices Award (2025) by the AIA NY and is part of the permanent collection of the Pompidou Center. An assistant professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, he is currently a fellow at the Getty Research Institute.

Michael Maltzan, FAIA 

Michael Maltzan founded Michael Maltzan Architecture, Inc. in 1995. His projects cross a wide range of typologies, from cultural institutions to city infrastructure. Michael’s notable projects include the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, MoMA QNS, Star Apartments, the Pittman Dowell Residence, the new Sixth Street Viaduct, MIT Vassar Street Residential Hall, the UCLA Hammer Museum, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery Inuit Art Centre.

Michael received an M.Arch from the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, and BFA and B.Arch degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and received the 2016 AIA Los Angeles Gold Medal. He is a recipient of a 2012 American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award and was inducted as a member of the Academy in 2023. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 2020, and currently serves on the Deans leadership council at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Visiting Committee to the GSD. He was featured in the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s 2019 film, What It Takes to Make a Home, delivered the 20th Annual John T. Dunlop Lecture for the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, and his work was named One of the 25 Best Inventions of 2015 by Time Magazine.

Michael’s work has gained international acclaim for innovation in both design and construction. It has been recognized with five Progressive Architecture awards, 52 citations from local, state and national chapters of the American Institute of Architects, the Rudy Bruner Foundation’s Gold Medal for Urban Excellence, the Zumtobel Group Award for Innovations for Sustainability & Humanity in the Built Environment, a 2020 Best of the Millennium AIA LA Honor Award, the 2025 AIA California Maybeck Award, and the 2025 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture.

The firm and its projects have been widely featured in national and international publications and have been exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art New York, the Heinz Architectural Center, the Canadian Center for Architecture, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. The firm’s work was selected for the 2006, 2018, and 2020 La Biennale di Venezia and is included in the permanent collections of Carnegie Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Maristella Casciato

Maristella Casciato (architect, architectural historian, and educator) is senior curator, head of architectural collections at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles since 2016. During her tenure she has been responsible for major acquisitions such as Frank Gehry Papers, 1954–1988; the Papers of Paul R. Williams, Brenda Levin, and the archives of the LA Conservancy. She has co-curated exhibitions at the GRI, including The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930 (2017), MONUMENT(ALITY) (2018), and Bauhaus Beginnings (2019). 

Casciato was awarded a Fulbright grant (1992) and a Graham Foundation Publication grant (2016). At the Canadian Centre for Architecture, she was Mellon Senior Fellow (2010) prior to being appointed associate director of research. 

Among her most recent publications: The Metropolis in Latin America 1830–1930. Cityscapes, Photographs, Debates, co-edited with I. Alonso (2021); Rethinking Global Modernism. Architectural Historiography and the Postcolonial, co-edited with V. Prakash and D. E. Coslett (2022); Technoscape. The Architecture of Engineers, co-edited with Pippo Ciorra (2022); and the facsimile reprint of Le Corbusier Album Punjab, 1951 (2024). Casciato has been nominated 2023 Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians.

The venue:  Jules Salkin first met John Lautner in the late 1930s at the Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin, where Lautner was apprenticing under Frank Lloyd Wright. Years later, Salkin commissioned him to design this home, completed in 1948. The two-bedroom hillside home is defined by its dramatic butterfly roof, an architectural gesture that showcases Lautner’s experimental approach. Rather than relying on conventional construction techniques, he employed a series of wing-shaped structural bents placed at eight-foot intervals along the length of the house. Two rows of central columns support the roof, allowing it to appear as though it floats above the fully glazed walls—an early glimpse of the expressive structural clarity and openness that would become hallmarks of Lautner’s work.

The house was restored by Barbara Bestor and currently is hosting the BLAKEHOUSE Exhibition by Peter Blake Gallery. 

Special thanks to Peter Blake and Brian Linder

RSVP HERE

Image credits:

Image 01: Still Room, L.A. Forum 

Image 02: Still Room, L.A. Forum

Image 03: Ignacio G. Galán and O.F. Architects (Alvaro M. Fidalgo + Arantza Ozaeta), "Beyond-the-family Kin." A House in Madrid, 2023. Photo by Imagen Subliminal

Image 04:  Ignacio G. Galán, Courtesy of Imagen Subliminal

Image 05: Michael Maltzan by Ron Eshel. 

Image 06: Maristella Casciato by Franco Panzini

Image 07: Ignacio G. Galán, David Gissen, Architensions (Nick Roseboro, Alessandro Orsini), "Fragments of Disability Fictions," Installation at the 6th Chicago Architecture Biennial, SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change, curated by Florencia Rodriguez, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, 2025. Photo by Omer Mohamed Gorashi

Image 08: Sterling Reed Photography 

Image 09: Sterling Reed Photography 

Image 10: Sterling Reed Photography