SoCal Minds

A green, national showcase for local design gurus

From Sci-Arc

When the design crowd descends on Los Angeles for a national event this weekend, the folks from the downtown architecture school will take center stage to discuss sustainability, the rage of the moment in residential and commercial circles. Director Eric Owen Moss, faculty members Alexis Rochas and Peter Zellner, and alumni Barbara Bestor, Anne Mooney and John Umbanhowar will hold court during panel discussions at the tony magazine-sponsored Dwell on Design show, opening today downtown. Besides discussions by alums of noteworthy homes they have designed and student displays of their work, two of the school's innovative projects will be among the topics tackled: the Cleantech Corridor Competition to come up with ideas for the recently established path along the Los Angeles River, and the SYNTHe green roof.

Cleantech corridor contest, green roof among topics to be tackled at Dwell show 

Click here for more info on 'Dwell on Design'

2 takes on how LA can find a greener tomorrow

From CSULA & Sci-Arc

In East LA and on the Westside, there will be two different takes on how both to make a better and greener tomorrow for Los Angeles, whether the emphasis is on the business and economic means to get there or on how the millions in this metropolis can best feed themselves. The Edmund G. 'Pat' Brown Institute of Public Affairs kicks off the green Thursday this morning with a program that examines how to make Los Angeles not only a more environmentally sound but also a sustainable place to live. Business, academic and policy experts will take on the topic from economic and political perspectives asking, for example, what role government needs to play in the city's green efforts and how investments can be encouraged in cleaner technologies and infrastructure. This afternoon, then, at the Pacific Design Center, planners, architects, community activists and others will turn to 'dishing out' about LA, discussing how to feed residents of the region with sensible means of plotting, growing, producing and distributing food in this urban area. Participants also can take in a school exhibition on urban scale, planned and unplanned, including examinations of sustainable farming in Watts and a notion to distribute and move around the iconic Hollywood sign. 

In East LA, a discussion on 'sustainable' future for City of Angels

At Pacific Design Center, 'dishing' on how metropolis might better feed itself

A cooperative ray of sunshine in solar contest

From Sci-Arc & Caltech

Here's a truly bright idea about student cooperation, brilliance and building an energy-smarter future: the architectural whizzes downtown have teamed up with the engineering geniuses in Pasadena to design and build a national competition-worthy prototype solar house, (shown at right) an entry that will get $100,000 in funding so it is constructed in an exhibit and test on the National Mall in Washington in October, 2011. The SoCal competitors, the first from this area so honored, were picked among 20 international challengers for the U.S. Energy Dept.'s 'Solar Decathalon.' Rather than knock skulls in this event, students from the two area institutions decided to capitalize on their respective strengths and to cooperate on an entry, hatched at an eatery in Old Town. Their plans will be exhibited downtown as part of the Earth Day programs and in an effort to boost awareness of both the team's success and its need for additional support and donations to participate in the DC competition.

Architects, engineers from two schools join for 'Solar Decathalon'

What will humans live in on the final frontier?

From Sci-Arc

It's not the kind of practice where clients clamor for practitioners' designs. But it is a slowly growing area of interest, and, certainly, of expertise. And if the longer-term indicators are to be believed, why, yes, there will be a demand of architects with galactic scale imaginations. Or so argue the slice of experts, including at least two from Southern California, who are fostering the specialty of "space architecture." A new text, "Out of This World: The New Field of Space Architecture," examines this new field and devotes a chapter to conceptual work done on a mobile lunar habitat. There's also the Out of This World blog on the topic that's worth checking out.

Photo: artist Pat Rawlings envisions a mobile lunar habitat

Pioneers in new field of architecture see `space planning' very differently

A review of bike-sharing plan for Wilshire Center

From Sci-Arc

Four students and their prof will be peddling hard their pedal-sharing proposal this week at a public project discussion at the AIA offices on Wilshire Boulevard. Space will be limited and those who wish to attend must RSVP for the Tuesday session, at which there will be presentations on the plan to develop a novel bike-sharing program in the Wilshire Center district. Research, feasibility studies and a master plan with locations and designs for the prospective bike stations still all must be reviewed by the Wilshire Center business improvement district in mid-December before the city of Los Angeles gets what the school says will be its first bike-sharing system.

Student initiative could lead to a novel transportation option in city

Art Tower in Culver City wins international award

From Sci-Arc

It's been awhile in the making and the online wags have taken a few whacks at it. But the Art Tower, a dominant feature of the Culver City redevelopment at Hayden Avenue and National Boulevard, has received international recognition form the World Architecture Community, whose site is, for the moment, off line. The twisting tower, designed by rock star architect Eric Owen Moss, who is the school's director, is 72-feet tall -- exempted from the area 56-foot limit -- and is 30-feet in diameter. It has an open interior and its walls are designed so special projectors inside can display art to the public, especially commuters on the planned light rail nearby. Moss has long labored to redevelop the Culver City tract as a signature project.

Photos: award-winning Art Tower in Culver City / Joan Springhetti, Sci-Arc

Eric Owen Moss tower in Culver City collects international award

Curbed LA reports on tower progress

LA Times profiles Eric Owen Moss

A Global, Online Search and Access to Lectures

From Sci-Arc

Some of the best known teachers, theorists and practitioners of architecture and design in Southern California and internationally will get greater exposure for their recorded discussions of their craft in downtown Los Angeles. The school, through its Kappe Library, has joined a freely accessible global online database in which 71,000 libraries have pooled their catalog information. This will let scholars and others quickly search for lecturers, lectures and topics and access the school's archives, which already can be tapped through the Sci-Arc web page. The downtown Kappe Libary, by the way, is open to the public.

Kappe Library Joins Global Database, Opening Lectures for Search, Greater Access

Click Here for Online Lectures' Archive, Via School Web Site  

LA-Vienna? Architectural Stars to Explain Links

From Sci-Arc

Los Angeles. Vienna. Vienna. Los Angeles. If links between the two metropolises don't exactly leap to mind, well, a stellar assemblage of architects and academics will help explain it all for free on Wednesday. First, a noted historian and contemporary architecture critic will detail the early 20th Century European diaspora that plunked among many other great lights the renowned Viennese duo of R.M. Schindler and Richard Neutra in LA. How did the young, crazy entertainment capital get shaped by them -- and how did it, in turn, transform them and their work? After Anthony Vidler, dean of Cooper Union's architecture school and a former UCLA faculty member and department chair, takes on that formidable topic, he'll turn to moderating a panel of internationally renowned competitors for designs for the sprawling 21st Century campus of the Vienna University of Economics and Business. These include: Zaha-Hadid Architects; Atelier Hitoshi Abe; Eric Owen Moss Architects; Thom Mayne, Morphosis Architects; and Peter Cook, Archigram/Crabstudio Architects. They'll tell how they proposed to integrate campus and urban life.

Photo: Vienna native Richard Neutra as he appeared on August, 1949, cover of Time

LA-Vienna: Explore Architectural Links in Two Centuries