DnA’s DJs (Design Journalists) are seasoned design journalists and scholars who add fresh perspectives to DnA. They keep track of emerging design talent and important design stories and report on them for the…
DnA’s DJs (Design Journalists) are seasoned design journalists and scholars who add fresh perspectives to DnA. They keep track of emerging design talent and important design stories and report on them for the show. Write to dna@kcrw.com if you have design stories to share with our DJs.
Caroline Chamberlain is a So-Cal native and recent graduate of UCLA. She majored in history and minored in German. She lived in Berlin for 8 months and studied at Humboldt University. While at UCLA, she was a reporter for Daily Bruin Radio, where she started a radio series sponsored by the UCLA History Department titled “In Perspective” that examined current events within their broader historical narratives. She is interested in the history of Los Angeles, and how design and architecture affect social change. She is currently studying Art Deco architecture in the Americas.
Guy Horton is a Los Angeles writer and author of the critical blog, The Indicator on ArchDaily.com, which covers issues ranging from the culture, politics, and business of architecture to theory and aesthetics. He is a frequent contributor to The Architect’s Newspaper, The Atlantic Cities, Metropolis Magazine, Architectural Record, Architect Magazine, and GOOD Magazine. He writes on cities and architecture for The Huffington Post and is a published poet. He holds an M.Arch from SCI-Arc and formerly studied in the humanities, pursuing a PhD in modern Chinese literature and theory at UCLA. His interest in architecture evolved from extensive traveling and stints living in cities throughout Asia. Guy is currently trying to teach himself how to play guitar–without much success. He is a fanatical listener of Henry Rollins’ show though when he is writing he listens to baroque and consumes far too many jelly beans. Most mornings he can be found pushing his one-year-old in a stroller up and down hills in the Pacific Palisades where he lives with his wife, writer-scholar Sherin Wing, and his other daughter who does not need to be pushed around in a stroller.
Carren Jao is an art, architecture and design journalist based in Los Angeles. Born and raised in the Philippines–itself a melting pot of cultures and histories– she’s fascinated by Los Angeles’ diversity and endless evolution. Her work explores the blurred lines between cultures, which show themselves in material culture. Her work has been published in Architectural Record, the Los Angeles Times, GOOD, Wired UK, KCET, and The Architect’s Newspaper, among others.
Maura Lucking is a historian and independent curator interested in the intersections of art, architecture, technology and object cultures. Based in Los Angeles and, for many years, in Chicago, she has worked in exhibitions and public programs at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in
the Fine Arts and in the Architecture and Design department of the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds a Master’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Art History, Criticism and Theory with a concentration in Architecture and Design, where her graduate thesis focused on Los Angeles architect Ray Kappe and the early years of the Southern California Institute of Architecture. She is a regular contributor to Rhizome on issues in contemporary design and new media and works in arts publishing with R.A.M. Publication + Distribution, where she has access to far too many beautiful design quarterlies. Her current research focuses on the role of publishing in expanding critical and theoretical design discourse, which she hopes might someday take the form of a bookstore.
Danielle Rago is an independent curator living and working in New York City and Los Angeles. She is also a freelance contributor to a number of international publications on art, architecture, and design. She has worked with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the A+D Museum and MAK Center in Los Angeles, and published in Abitare, The Architect’s Newspaper, Architectural Record, CLOG, Domus, LOG: Observations on Contemporary Architecture and the City, PIN-UP Magazine, and WIRED. Danielle holds a Master’s degree in Architecture History and Critical Thinking from the Architectural Association, London. Her focus is on the shifting role of the institution and media, and how contemporary architecture and its public is being produced and mediated through the institution and curator.
Mallery Roberts Morgan is a design consultant and journalist who lived in Paris for over twenty years and now calls Los Angeles home. Twenty years experience as a Paris-based interiors writer and stylist uniquely informs Mallery’s journalism; she is the current Los Angeles correspondent to French Architectural Digest after working at Paris Vogue and contributing regularly to The New York Times and British Elle Décor. Her writing can also be found in Marie Claire Maison, Elle, Madame Figaro, The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Interior Design, American Vogue, The Independent, Numéro, Marie Claire Living and The Hollywood Reporter. Recent creative collaborations include projects with the Decorative Arts and Design Council of LACMA, Maxfield Gallery, Atelier AM and Christofle. Mallery has also worked on both residential and commercial interior design projects in London, Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Mexico.
Alissa Walker writes about design, architecture, cities, transportation and walking for publications like Dwell, Fast Company, GOOD, Wired, Details, LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times, and is an associate producer for the KCRW public radio show DnA: Design and Architecture. In 2010 she was named a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow for her writing on design and urbanism, and in 2011 she was awarded an ArtPlace grant for the initiative “GOOD Ideas for Cities,” where creatives propose solutions to urban problems proposed by city leaders. Alissa lives in a royal blue house in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles where she throws ice cream socials, tends to a drought-tolerant garden, writes infrequently on her blog, and relishes life in L.A. without a car.
