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I write from chilly London (to rainy LA) where I have joined my family for the holidays. London, like other mega-cities, is trying to find ways to remain liveable with its ever expanding population and teeming central city streets. Its preoccupations are echoed in major cities worldwide, including in less dense LA.
This became crystal clear when I was working on the show for this …

You heard Bobbye Tigerman on DnA today. On Thursday she will be wearing her professional hat, as LACMA assistant curator of decorative arts, when she will introduce a panel she has produced about the relationship between architecture, design, and (dare one say it?) craft. I’ll be moderating the discussion with two excellent guests: glass artist Alison Berger and potter Adam Silverman, both RISD architecture grads-turned …

Two institutions are seeking architectural talent. One is Woodbury University, where curators Jayna Zweiman and Christian Stayner are mounting a show of women-designed architecture.  The other is the AIA/LA where members (and noted LA architects) John Friedman, Li Wen and Warren Techentin  are calling on architects of all stripes to enter a talent competition that will judged by such luminaries as Neil Denari, AIA (Neil M. Denari Architects), Lisa Iwamoto, …

I owe today’s show to chance meetings with other people. Why do I say this? Because a couple weeks back I met a young designer who asked me to explain in this blog how I select the topics for shows.
In brief, generally my co-producers and I look for design stories that are tied to current events, have a compelling design and human storyline while reinforcing the …

Our fearless leader (soon-to-be-replaced), Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger returned recently  from a trip to Asia,  declaring himself so impressed by Shanghai’s vast 2010 Expo that he would like to see California host a World Fair in 2020.
Not everybody likes Expos, however, as Rowan Moore opined in the Guardian: “They are vast, extravagant pretexts for national and commercial posturing. They are miserable to visit, entailing foot-aching tramps and long …

One of the many institutions that make LA and endlessly interesting place to live is Collage Dance Theatre, the dance troupe helmed by Heidi Duckler that for 25 years has been performing in architectural and urban spaces (I’ve seen them perform in the Modern home of Stephen Ehrlich and Nancy Griffin, and at a gas station in the Valley.)
To mark their quarter century of …

Tomorrow night (Thursday, November 4), the architect Stephen Kanner, who so tragically passed away earlier this year, will be memorialized at the launch of an exhibit of his work at A+D Museum.
As I wrote about Stephen here, he was central to the LA architecture community, not only as a designer of talent himself but also as a passionate advocate for modern architecture in the region. He co-founded …

Before post-modernism was degraded by certain buildings and products into silliness (AT & T Building, anyone?) it was a spirited antidote to a dour brand of Modernism.
One designer/artist/maker/ceramicist who has long embodied that uncynical joy in color and — sometimes goofy — shape is a friend of mine, Peter Shire.
Opening with a party Saturday — at the Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery at the Broad …

The news broke recently that brilliant structural engineer Cecil Balmond has left ARUP, the engineering firm he’s been with for 40 years. It is Balmond who made possible such landmarks as the CCTV building and the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing. He has also designed  striking bridges, including the Weave Bridge in Pennsylvannia, above, and the Coimbra bridge in Portugal.

I reference this because we’ve seen a Golden …

Who would have thought that a new logo, for a company that seemed to be waning, would cause such a furore? But people went to the mat over the redesign of the Gap logo, itself one of multiple variants on previous logos. They also went to the mat over the airing of the topic on this month’s DnA. I was amazed at the number of …