Solana Beach Station
Designed in the early 90s, when transit-oriented development was nascent in California, Rob Wellington Quigley’s Solana Beach Rail Station packs a significant civic punch.
Category Archives: Places
The Americana at Brand
“In Glendale, The Americana pioneered the concept of mixed-use urban residential in a downtown and inspired a 10-year building boom that added over 3,000 new residential units across 20-plus projects to the immediate area.” My essay about The Americana at Brand is one of the many entries in the online SAH Archipedia.
Church of the Nativity
There are three obvious and immediate precedents to Moore Ruble Yudell’s Church of the Nativity in Rancho Santa Fe: the monastery, the California Mission, and the rancho hacienda. Like its antecedents, the public life at the Church of the Nativity is open only to initiates who make the architectural journey into its protective cloister.
Beverly Hills Civic Center
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.
St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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, Pasadena
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.
Oceanside Civic Center
Charles Moore’s 1990 Civic Center is a delightful discovery in sleepy Oceanside California. Located at the center of town, Moore’s Irving Gill-inspired buildings surround a great plaza and fountain.
The Dilemma of Density
Housing and Community in Southern California as seen from Pasadena | Presented at “Surfacing Urbanisms,” the 2006 ACSA West Conference, hosted by Woodbury University
Victoria Gardens
Commentary published in “Los Angeles: Building the Polycentric City” for the 13th Congress of New Urbanism, June 2005
Exposition Park
Commentary published in “Los Angeles: Building the Polycentric City” for the 13th Congress of New Urbanism, June 2005
A Note on Downtown…
“… because that is all downtown Los Angeles deserves.” Editorial to the Fall 2003 LA Forum Online Newsletter on Downtown LA.
Exposition Park
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.
Urban Utopias
Fifty Years of New Town Ideology: A comparative analysis of three New Towns outside of Washington DC: Greenbelt, Reston, and Kentlands
Urban Paranoia
A political comparison between grid and non-grid urban forms, as analyzed via Roswell NM and The X-Files episode “Arcadia” | Published in “loudpaper” volume 3, issue 3, 2000
The Irvine House
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 