Commentary

The collapse of a factory in Bangladesh that killed at least 1,1000 people has raised questions about the role of the fashion industry in the working conditions found in countries like Bangladesh. Several companies including H&M, Carrefour, and Benetton have signed an international agreement that requires each signatory to help fund fire and building safety improvements in factories.
So we wanted to know, what does …

The design pack was out in force Wednesday night at the opening of the Mak Center’s Everything Loose Will Land at the Schindler House, the So Cal HQ for bohemian salons and unfettered progressive thinking and making since the 1920s. The Good4Nothing Connoisseur, aka Bennett Stein, reports.
The history-rich scene show (and what is history really but the right now anyway) is guest curated by Sylvia …

When Alissa Walker isn’t doing thoughtful interviews (like this one with Brendan Ravenhill on this week’s DnA) or putting the world to rights (through causes like advocating for the rights of pedestrians), she is writing witty take-downs, like this skewering of the oft and tired skewering of LA by envious New Yorkers (and nothing stokes a skewering of a sunny, creative place than being harried …

Sean Dougall is an LA-based designer who cut his teeth working on the production design of some of the biggest awards and political events of the last decade (the 2008 Democratic National Convention, for example). Andrew Paulson is his partner in life and work who staked his name out here as a literary agent for a New York agency. Now they have formed a …

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set the architecture world atwitter when she invoked Frank Gehry’s work as a new model for international relations: “We need a new architecture for this new world, more Frank Gehry than formal Greek. . . some of his work at first might appear haphazard, but in fact, it’s highly intentional and sophisticated. . . Where once a few strong …

Change a logo at your peril!!!
Following an on online revolt against its new blue and gold stylized “UC” (discussed on this KCRW segment), university officials announced Friday that they are suspending further use of the offending logo, designed by an in-house team. “While I believe the design element in question would win wide acceptance over time, it also is important that we listen to and …

Since Frank Gehry exploded architectural form in the 1970s, many designers have emulated him. But when critics have described as “Gehry-like” a building featuring plywood and chicken wire, or wavy aluminum, or lopsided walls, Gehry himself has tended to look puzzled, saying, I don’t see it, I don’t get the connection between their work and mine.
This response used to sound disingenuous to me — …

By Javier Cabral
KCRW generated quite the design buzz this last weekend at the Dwell on Design exhibition. Sonic Trace, a project of KCRW & AIR (Association of Independents in Radio), was there to personally showcase the 30 submissions received for the sound booth design challenge, with a focus on the winning design submitted by Hugo Martinez and Christin To of Mat-ter: La Burbuja or …

Hollywood, June 5, 2012 – The Good4Nothing Connoisseur (aka Bennett Stein)
Auto-destruction adherents are on high alert as authorities canvass witnesses, chase down leads and sift through clues to solve an unspeakable act of violence in a city turned upside down. Evidence indicates that early Sunday morning armed assailants broke in and took axes, sex toy prosthetics and barbed epithets to Joel Chen’s Hollywood showroom that …

Several weeks ago I went to Frank Gehry’s office and he showed me a sketch model of his set for Don Giovanni, a seeming cluster of scrunched-up paper balls. He said, jokingly, something along the lines of, “critics have said my buildings are like crumpled paper; well, this set will be crumpled paper.” As it turns out, he wasn’t joking. His set was that …