In late 2020, Kelsi Maree Borland talked with me about planning and development in Glendale and Santa Monica, the two cities where I worked between 2005 and 2020. My perspective from inside City Hall resulted in four short articles published with Globe St.
A decade of urban design in Los Angeles: my take on the most influential city-making projects of the past decade, including this most recent and consequential year.
The Beverly Hills Civic Center is a wildly ambitious, yet flawed, project that one imagines would never be built in today’s environment of hard-nosed spreadsheets. Betraying Charles Moore’s signature theatricality, it is packed with idiosyncratic and mannerist architectural expressions, and draws more inspiration from Rome’s Baroque period than the more obvious local traditions of Spanish Revival or City Beautiful movements.
State Senate Bill (SB) 827 would densify housing along transit; Alan Loomis explains the debate for the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design.
St Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Pacific Palisades is one of the more prominent projects in Charles Moore’s oeuvre, perhaps more as an illustration of his inclusive and interactive community-based design process than for its architectural form. However, St Matthew’s confidently expresses more architectural ideas and a larger urban presence than its suburban location would suggest.
Plaza Las Fuentes, located just east of City Hall, is one of the more under-appreciated works of architecture in Pasadena. Its 360-room hotel and adjacent office tower slip into the Civic Center quietly with a comfortable grace. Much of this comfort – which is architectural but also tactile – is derived from a masterful site plan, organized around public courtyards, gardens, fountains, terraces, arcades, and lobbies.
On Tuesday, March 7, Los Angeles residents will vote on Measure S: a controversial proposal aimed at reforming the planning system by ceasing certain developments until particular changes to the code are made. In the interest of conveying the complexity of Measure S, and exploring its potential implications for a future Los Angeles urbanism, The LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design interviewed two planning professionals: Alan Loomis, Deputy Director for Urban Design & Mobility at City of Glendale, and Richard Platkin, a former LA City Planner now teaching at USC.
Commentary on the LA Forum’s Dingbat 2.0 competition, written for the publication: Dingbat 2.0: The Iconic Los Angeles Apartment as Projection of a Metropolis
Reflections on the Southern California Edison photography archive, published in “Form and Landscape,” The Huntington’s contribution to Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in LA.
A review of Glendale’s Downtown Specific Plan, featured in “Planning Los Angeles,” published for the 2012 American Planning Association conference in Los Angeles.
Housing and Community in Southern California as seen from Pasadena | Presented at “Surfacing Urbanisms,” the 2006 ACSA West Conference, hosted by Woodbury University
The CalTrans building is a work-a-day office for the regional bureaucratic functions of the state’s transportation department. As such, it is most appropriately viewed against the offices of other large regional agencies, like the Department of Water and Power. In this context, Morphosis has created the most stunning architectural expression of bureaucratic power Los Angeles has seen in decades.
Commentary published in “Los Angeles: Building the Polycentric City” for the 13th Congress of New Urbanism, June 2005
Commentary published in “Los Angeles: Building the Polycentric City” for the 13th Congress of New Urbanism, June 2005
Commentary published in “Los Angeles: Building the Polycentric City” for the 13th Congress of New Urbanism, June 2005
Commentary published in “Los Angeles: Building the Polycentric City” for the 13th Congress of New Urbanism, June 2005
Commentary published in “Los Angeles: Building the Polycentric City” for the 13th Congress of New Urbanism, June 2005
Commentary published in “Los Angeles: Building the Polycentric City” for the 13th Congress of New Urbanism, June 2005
The Farmers Market, The Grove and the future of the Shopping Mall | Published in the LA Forum 2004 Annual
The Los Angeles River and the Renewal of the City | Published in the Winter 2003 issue of ArcCA
“… because that is all downtown Los Angeles deserves.” Editorial to the Fall 2003 LA Forum Online Newsletter on Downtown LA.
In so far as Exposition Park has been and continues to be encroached upon by development (and simultaneously subject to abandonment), it is an allegory for Los Angeles in general. Just as LA’s natural and agricultural landscapes have been systematically developed without consistent open space protection, Exposition Park has been treated as vacant land waiting for buildings.
Commerce is a fundamental function of the city, if not the primary reason for urban life. What else is the city but a giant machine for making money? | Editorial to the Fall 2002 LA Forum newsletter.
A review of “Eden by Design: The 1930s Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region” and the 2000 LA Mayoral Debate at Occidential College
The Master Suite As the owners of a new $200,000 plus Irvine Home, the happy couple are rewarded with generous personal space. Occupying nearly a quarter of the house, the […]
Delirious LA 