02.19.09 Atelier Bow Bow @ REDCAT

Atelier Bow Wow’s fun-scale installation at the REDCAT theater and exhibition space downtown is not just a play on the Case Study houses of the 40s and 50s in L.A., but also a subtle and refreshingly casual take on L.A.’s heaviest Modern hitters: Neutra, Eames and Koenig.

There's a half sphere for lounging, a playpen for community barbecue-ing, and a dangerous looking hammock machine all presented as “houses” – and all constructed from big, off-colored heaps of scrap wood. These “houses” take their cues not from the historically boxy, white, and strictly modern Architectural past of Neutra and Ellwood, but instead these pieces revel in the unresolved, schizophrenic other: the sunburned, lazy outdoor living of Schindler and Eames. Atelier Bow Wow is riffing on the laid back vibe that the Taschen books ignore, and they’re cheering on the raggedy beach comber chic that has come to define the casual, nature-centric, Sunset living of post-Case Study L.A.

Show ends March 29.

02.17.09 Edgar Arceneaux and the Watts House Project @ Farmlab

After a free, vegan lunch buffet – and a lot of chatting and networking – a gregarious mix of L.A. activists, amateur farmers, designers, artists and neighborhood friends settled in to listen to tales unfold regarding Edgar Arceneaux’s continual re-development-as-art-project in the Watt’s towers neighborhood area.

Arceneaux’s been working on the Watt’s House Project ever since Houston’s own Rick Lowe (Arceneaux’s mentor) was asked to come to L.A. to start a similar project to his super successful Project Row Houses in Houston’s Third Ward neighborhood. Arceneaux worked with Lowe to begin the Watt’s House Project – a community-building project that emerged when neighborhood groups, artists and activists crossed wires to create new forms of civic networks, political forces, and aesthetics. But when Lowe was called back to Houston for duties related to Project Row Houses, Arceneaux naturally stepped in to accept the passing of the torch.

WHP plans to secure a foreclosed property on 107th street to ground its physical presence in the region, serving as a community hub and base of operations for the future of the organization (including a community center, exhibit area and artist-in-residency space). But in the meantime Arceneaux and WHP are renovating and improving the façade of the entire 107th street residential block facing the Watts Towers. This current revitalization work gives the WHP project staff a reputation for helpful community service in the area while at the same time, secures meaningful neighborhood connections with residents.

Arceneaux continually reminded the audience at Farmlab that this was meant to be a participatory session and that suggestions, tips, volunteer input were all up for discussion – Arceneaux reiterated that the project team (himself included) still has much to learn from others in the neighborhood and related groups.

So what began as a conventional slide show-lecture became a who’s-who of South L.A. activism and a networking session for anyone concerned with the region around Watts. From representatives of LAWorks, to gang violence activists and political consultants; folks spoke up to offer criticisms, neighborhood information, city plans for the area, and, of course, anecdotes about the towers and the site. Arceneaux’s mission is not a simple one, and he’ll need loads of help to get there – but he got a little closer today with an enthusiastic outpouring of resources and support.

02.11.09 Does Los Angeles Need a Downtown?

Ed Soja has a theatricality about him when he speaks that could make virtually anyone with a pulse get interested in urban redevelopment. So, for urbanism geeks, hearing Professor Soja talk about L.A. – and downtown in particular – is a true treat. He likened L.A.’s present situation (in terms of demographics, immigrant poor, economic consequences and manufacturing possibilities) as equal to Manchester, UK in 1850. Almost with glee, he added, “Engels isn’t dead after all” (Hey, he’s a critical theory guy writing a book on the recent resurgence of the labor movement in L.A – he’s got a reason to be excited about Marxism again.)

He wasn’t the only giddy one. The positivity and anticipation were buzzing at the REDCAT, despite the gloomy-doomy economic prospects and downer comments that opened up the panel discussion. The panel was rounded out by the California Redevelopment Agency’s CEO and all-around practitioner of spatial, environmental and legal affairs, Cecilia Estolano, and Manual Castells, USC professor of Technology, Society and Regional Affairs and author of La Question Urbaine and The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture among many other titles. The panel was moderated by Steven Levine of CalArts.

So it was a good mix. Estolano threw out the question of the evening and made her own: What Kind of Downtown Does L.A. Want? She proceeded to propose a downtown that could build on its already well-established manufacturing core and expand it further to bring “clean technology” engineering, research and design firms, light industrial companies, bio-medical research companies, and more manufacturing downtown (and along the banks on the L.A. River) from downtown, through the old Goodyear complex in South L.A., to the port (again, already established for future development to build upon).

Estolano’s was a re-occurring theme: Soja and Castells spoke to labor and workforce and manufacturing as the forefront of development downtown as well. It’s the first time I can remember an urban design forum or panel unanimously suggesting neither a mall (L.A. LIVE and Nokia), nor a park or shopping district (Grand Avenue and the Civic Park by Related Group), nor a transportation project (Light rail to the Westside) could remedy our civic woes. Imagine that: instead of giving people jobs at a Pinkberry outside the Staples center, providing them a career at a manufacturing plant, where they can transform themselves into a member of the middle class.

It’s been a tragic fall for real estate in L.A. and it’ll continue to hurt everyone for a long while. But it slowly dawned on everyone in CalArt’s theater Wednesday night – now that civic leaders have finally been forced to let go their death grip on the concept that loft living will save downtown (and, on a broader level, the city in general), the crash of 2008 could make room for a new concept – the city as a backdrop for a hard-working population. As Soja explained, the question in the past hasn’t really been “How can we make downtown better?” It’s been more like “How can we get white, upper class Westsiders to live in a high-rise tower in downtown L.A. and make believe they’re living in New York.” That’s all behind us now with 2008. Bring on the next industrial revolution.

02.07.09 Favorite New Neighborhood

It’s Rose Avenue in Venice, where we’ve been hanging at the newly deck-ed out (literally) Venice Beach wines (a store, tasting bar and place for small eats), where they have toasted sandwiches made from brie and grapes, not to mention (as one might suspect) fabulous wine assortments, and ale, and beer. Just a hop down the street is C.A.V.E. gallery, open just seven months now. We were there for the opening of the Yum Yum show on Feb. 6th. It’s a warm storefront space, with this month’s exhibit featuring illustrations, wall sculptures, and bite-sized paintings. For the opening there was also live painting on the patio and a DJ.



The renaissance of Rose is not without its red flags though: We’re going to have to do some investigating into the new development happening on the South side of the street at the 500 block (directly across from Venice Beach wines). Will those "NEW CONDOS" be as close to the street and set-back-less as it looks in the rendering? Will the lot just lie empty for a year in the current economic climate – leaving our favorite new Avenue with a gaping hole in its smile? Check back and we’ll update the sitch.

02.02.09 CB08

From the land of “the Real Housewives,” Disneyland and endless toll roads comes another very capable show by the Orange County Museum of Art, whose exhibition chops just keep growing in stature. Curated by Lauri Firstenberg – director of the nonprofit space LAXART in Culver City – the 2008 California Biennial includes 54 artists and group entities with a collectively heightened political and social tilt, featuring Amanda Ross-Ho’s excavated painting studio walls, transplanted into the gallery here; Patrick "Pato" Hebert's lawn signs with self-help-book-inspired messages; Kara Tanaka's mechanical ode to Marilyn Monroe’s flying skirt; Jedediah Caesar's crap-filled pick-up truck and free, hefty, bound editions of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest’s sixth book installment (to name a very, very few).

If you can’t get down to the Fashion island complex (yes, the OCMOA complex in located in the shopping mall’s Vertigo-inducing, epic curving boulevards), one can catch off-site exhibits all over the Southland including: LAXART; Five Thirty Three Gallery; the Japanese American National Museum; MacArthur Park & NOKIA LA LIVE; The Standard Hotel in West Hollywood; the UAG/ROOM Gallery at the University of California, Irvine; Estación Tijuana in, er, Tijuana; Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum in Santa Barbara at the University Art Museum, University of California Santa Barbara; the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco; Walter and McBean Galleries also in San Francisco at the Art Institute; the High Desert Test Sites, in Joshua Tree with works by Joel Kyack, Hannah Greely, Ry Rocklin, Patrick Jackson, Alice Konitz, Jack Pierson, Yoshua Okon, Amy and Wendy Yao's Art Swap Meet, Jonathan Hernandez, Thom Merrick; and The Wonder Valley Institute for Contemporary Art with Julia Scher, Ann Magnuson, Marnie Weber and the Spirit Girls. Up until March 15th.

01.24.09 Good News and Bad News

The good news is that plans are moving forward for the little riverbank-park-that-could: district 4’s North Atwater Creek Park expansion. The proposed plan – including landscaping, biking and hiking trails, picnic areas, scenic spots and signage along the river – was presented to the community by city officials this week thanks to much hard work and coordination by the folks at the Griffith Park Draft Master Plan Working Group, who recognized that by combining North Atwater Park, the North Atwater Stream Restoration site and a portion of an L.A. city service yard, money could be saved by bypassing an expensive acquisition of new parkland.

It’s good news because it takes one more big step in the direction towards connecting the surrounding community with the restored creek, the greater L.A. River greenway and longer bike trails along the river. Additionally, the location is near a neighborhood of working families, is close to bus lines, and will be in walking distance from the Chevy Chase Recreation Center.

But despite the good work and crafty compiling of lands by community activists, the Bad news is this: state funding for the park ultimately comes from Sacramento, which means that there is no funding at all for this “shovel ready” parkland link. Everyone’s keeping their chin up on this one: for example, this note from the district 4 website, “Design plans are moving forward in the hope that the project will be ready for construction when funds become available.”

01.22.09 Everyday Urbanism at LACE/LAForum

Everyday Urbanism remains a confounding experiment that revels in the present, messy state of things, but its updated version brings with it a more deliberate set of follow up questions after the last decade. Its authors too have had to make their ways in the compromises of the public sector (John Chase in Urban Planning at the City of West Hollywood), the hustle of the private sector (John Kaliski with his Urban Studio practice in L.A.), and the minefield of academia (Margaret Crawford at Harvard’s School of Design) since the turn of the millennium.

Thursday night’s ten-year birthday party, at LACE/LAForum in Hollywood, meant to salute all three authors (all were present) and their achievements concerning the subject matter. Fortunately, the event instead generated a re-hashing of the controversies the book originally launched, and possibly added a new epilogue for the book in everyone’s mind: Does Everyday Urbanism’s stance against conventional urban design mean anything anymore? And is the idea of the user-as-designer still relevant?

As an alternative to New Urbanism, Everyday Urbanism argued that by moving through one’s own city and through the experience of Mom and Pop stores, ad-hocism, nomadism, and D.I.Y. construction and graphics in one’s environment, designers could begin to understand the value of these urban elements in terms of orientation in the city, community identification, new economic potentials, or new forms of public space. Architects, urban designers and developers could take note of these everyday elements, interpret them, and then use them as tools with which to build.

Remember 1999? We didn’t know if the world might come crashing down on us in Y2K, we were finally making it out of the last recession, we braved the earthquakes and firestorms of the mid-90s, and there was a big surplus in the Federal budget – waiting for a rainy day as Al Gore used to say. And we hadn’t yet been attacked by terrorists in New York, ushering in a new interest in defensible architecture.

Flash forward to Everyday Urbanism now. We have the Grove and Americana. We have Dubai and Mumbai and the Bibao effect. We’ve had house-flipping, and soap operas about real estate on HGTV, and now a deflating bubble, sucking a lot of people out of the business. There’s a screaming need and challenge for new infrastructure and a re-engineering of our modes of energy production and consumption. Folks attending Thursday night’s event wanted to know if random sprawling strip malls and the cartoon paintings of fruit and veggies on the stucco wall of an Eastside mercado were still enough to re-invigorate our hobbling profession. The panelists said yes: The thinking behind Everyday Urbanism has become a built-in reflex in how we work and observe the city; it’s opened new opportunities for group design, community participation in design, and a reconsideration of authorship in a field that should be tacking its course away from Starchitecture and towards a new potential for the author-less-ness of things as they are for real people – away from corporate populism. Still sounds a little 90’s to me, but we could all use a happy flashback and an image of a painted stucco wall with Monica Lewinsky and Jesus to lighten the moment.