Sundown Salon #30:HUMANS WERE HERE! BUILDING IN L.A.
DATE: September 10th, 2006, 3:30 - 7:30PM
IN CONJUNCTION WITH: The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at California College of Art, San Francisco Larry Rinder, director 09.12.06–11.11.06
FEATURING THE ARCHITECTS: Bestor Architecture, Escher Gunewardena, Fritz Haeg Studio, Francois Perrin, Alexis Rochas, Taalman Koch Architecture
PERFORMANCES BY: Bedrooom Walls, Kelly and David, New Energy Dark Consort of Musicke
NEWSPAPER WITH: Megan Carey, editor, Carlo Flores, graphic designer
DOCUMENTARY BY: Nils Timm
4:00 PM - BEDROOM
WALLS played the very first salon in the cave in 2001, for the last salon they play from the comfort of a queen size bed up in the dome.
6:00 PM - KELLY
AND DAVID roam around throughout the afternoon, pleasuring us with their music. They have tea with a mouse, witness a standoff between a wolf and a coyote, learn spells from a shapeshifter, and a sometime lover reveals himself to them as the Devil.
7:00 PM - NEW
ENERGY DARK CONSORT OF MUSICKE performs a timed duration of organ, flute, and slow movement. (featuring members of the West Coast Encounter Group, Red Krayola, Whale Folk, and Far West New Energy Family Band)
SCREENED CONTINUOUSLY - HUMANS WERE HERE! (Building in L.A.) the video Documentary by filmmaker Nils Timm is presented for the first time. Along with the companion newspaper, they tell the story of the current work and life of six diverse eastside L.A. architecture and design practices. Each present one project currently under construction or recently completed, exploring their relationship to the geography and community of the city they call home, and how that has affected the projects they build. They provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how they meet with clients, contractors, and consultants to get a project built. The presentation attempts to reveal the human stories behind the work. In contrast to the slick, homogenized portrayal of architecture made to elicit desire and envy, this reveals the messy truths of construction for today’s designers and architects.
TEXTS FROM THE EXHIBITION NEWSPAPER (pdf)
HUMANS WERE HERE
By Fritz Haeg
Around the time that we were starting to organize this architecture show, I heard an interview on the radio with the members of a southern folksy-techno band. One of the musicians was describing how they work in the studio—recording, sampling, editing—using the machines to organize and manage the sounds of their instruments and voices. She said that occasionally, some messed-up, but truthful sound would break through all of those machines. They would look at each other and happily exclaim, “Humans were here!”
As architects and designers, we also have our voices mediated by machines. If a building becomes architecture when it is a manifestation of human thought and intention, then perhaps it is exactly at those “Humans were here!” moments when we really start to say something with our buildings. Since we do not physically build our work, the literal human touch of the architect is absent. We depend on our machine acumen to communicate through our work. Beginning with drafting and modeling software, and ending with the photograph of the completed project, we increasingly need to be well-versed in the manipulation of many media.
The Generated Building
The computer software available to architects today helps us to draw and redraw, revise and reconfigure our designs ad infinitum with complete accuracy. This software may also assist us in creating buildings that use resources in a more effective and less wasteful manner. Perhaps the most visible evidence of this new technology is the breathtaking formal and fabrication capabilities that were previously impossible with pencil and T-square, hammer and saw. We have begun to see the gorgeous evidence of this in the seductive forms of many new buildings.
As we delight in these new powers, we also ask ourselves as architects: What are the vital aspects of design that the narrow parameters of any software program will never be able to accomplish? At what point does this tool become a surrogate for complex, responsive, architectural thought? The landscape of the software itself can indeed become a new construction site, free of all of those unpredictable trees, unstable rocks, humid air, gusty winds, and glaring sun. This can be of great comfort—there are easy answers, and they are all within the binary code of a computer program. The most sophisticated software can’t process those thrilling and scary particularities that make architecture eccentric, alive, vital, and human. But a new generation of architects is growing up with these tools and is developing in parallel with them. In their hands, the architect’s computer is evolving beyond a shape-making novelty into a potent tool for both problem solving and true human expression.
The Photographed Building
A compelling photograph of a building can sometimes be as influential as the firsthand experience of the building itself. In an age where design and architecture have gained some broader interest, we as architects must contend with the secondhand experience of our work through photographs. As a matter of fact, most people may only ever see it this way. When it comes time to tell the story of our buildings with pictures, we like to neatly sweep the evidence of those lives out of the frame. We build for people, but people are messy. We replace the laundry on the floor, the unwashed dishes, the children’s toys, and the pile of newspapers with a fresh orchid and a bowl of perfectly arranged out-of-season ripe fruit. Why can’t the depictions of our work tolerate the very things they are supposedly designed to accommodate? After what might be years of long hours laboring over the minutia of a design, why would we want to surrender our idealized vision to the casual whim of an inhabitant? Like the ubiquitous photoshopped image of the too-thin model, these staged images of the untainted dwelling present an unrealistic story of how people live. This can lead to a certain nervous inferiority complex in the reader of today’s design magazines. Is that the life I should be striving for? Do people really live like that? Are those parts of myself not represented in these pictures something I am supposed to hide? Environmental exposure and human occupation degrade architecture. They are forces on buildings that require moderating, guiding, channeling, or controlling, but in many ways we have come to view them as the enemy. At times, it has seemed that the discipline of architecture was plagued by some autoimmune virus that attacked a vital part of itself it saw as foreign. But as an industrial modern movement fades behind us, and environmental crises looms on the horizon, architecture appears to be moving away from these tendencies toward a more thoughtful engagement with natural forces.
The Video Screen and the Newspaper
Humans were here! (Building in L.A.) employs familiar mass media forms to tell the more human, less formal stories of architecture and how buildings are made. Instead of the conventional architectural communication tools of the model—the rendering and the staged photograph—we have produced stories for this newspaper and a video documentary by filmmaker Nils Timm that feature Bestor Architecture, Escher GuneWardena, Fritz Hæg Studio, Taalman Koch Architecture, François Perrin, and Alexis Rochas. We are part of a large, diverse, and connected community of architects and designers on the eastside of Los Angeles. This presentation of our work does not imply any particular stylistic tendency or school of thought. Rather, it illustrates the healthy diversity of architectural thought bubbling under the surface of Los Angeles.
Under Construction
Each of us presents one project currently under construction or recently completed in the pages of this newspaper, in the video documentary, and in a public set of construction documents. All of these media together present our relationship to the geography and community of the city we call home and how that has, in turn, affected the projects we are building. Looking behind the scenes, the construction documents show how design is communicated to those humans that actually build it. The documentary tells the story of how people come together to create a building, through long days and nights in the studio with employees and coworkers, and through meetings with clients, contractors, and consultants. In contrast to the slick, homogenized, and hygienic portrayal of architecture made to elicit desire and envy, this show hopes to reveal the messy truths of construction for today’s designers and architects. It is easy to take our built environment for granted. There is a certain inevitability to it. With this show we hope to reveal that behind every building, there are humans!
I LIKE CHINATOWN
by Fritz Haeg
It's on my way to downtown or between meetings and home or a good place to stop after a stressful morning at the Building Department. Somehow I always manage to find street parking. This can be an integral part of its pleasure. If I don't happen to find street parking on the first pass, sometimes I just skip it.
Leaving the street and my parked car, the traffic noises fade away as I enter into the plaza. I pass the fountain. The artist v made a full scale replica of it years ago. I saw it at Metro Pictures in New York before I moved to L.A. It summed up all of my fantasies about the city. There it was, a huge mass of unstable rock surrounded by water, painted all combinations of bright and fluorescent colors, with each ledge or niche presenting a metal bowl or cup. Each container had a title, 'Luck", "Love", "Vacation", "Lottery", "Money", "Health", "Suerte". Coins tossed were aimed for one of these. Once a friend got three "Suerte"'s in a row, and within a week the girl from Mexico that he had a mad crush on was his girlfriend. Just this week they finished fixing up the fountain. They planted new bamboo, painted everything grey, removed the bowls and added some subtle lighting. It's new incarnation is much more tasteful and elegant, less garish and campy. I love the fountain on the other side of Hill Street more I think. It is like a fake miniature mountain with little bonsai trees growing on it, floating in a pool of water with koy fish. Turtles somehow manage to survive the murky water and sun themselves on the rocks. I love this little mountain, and it directly inspired the terrarium with water and rocks that the Bernardi Salcedo residence is designed around.
I head to Via for lunch. There are some periods when I eat at there every day, and then go for weeks without going at all. For the first year it was vegetable curry with a ice blended green tea boba. Then I started to do yoga everyday, and switched to my new usual which is vegetable soup with tofu and ice blended green tea with soy milk. They start making it when they see me coming. I look forward to this. Sometimes I sit outside, usually a few friends pass by and one or two will join for lunch.
There's Fiona and Sean, they have an alternative sciency art space on Chung King and we'll talk about what show they have up at the moment, or what's coming up next. There's Wendy who runs Ooga Booga, my favorite store in all of L.A., which sits atop a bakery nearby...'Is the new issue of Butt Magazine in yet?". There's Javier, a client whose gallery I designed a few years ago, but since starting up the new gallery in Berlin, he's not around much any more. There's Kimberly, Liz and Gretchen, who I call the D.G.S. girls, they are the awesome graphic designers for all of the Gardenlab and Edible Estates projects that we are doing. I can count on seeing them there most days, and since we are always working on something together, lunch turns into shop talk. There's Katie from Sister, there's Lexi from Happy Lion, there's Robby from the Journal and there's always some random people you never expect to see that are in town from New York or something and trying to figure out what the hell is going on in L.A.
THE WEATHER REPORT
by Francois Perrin
LA is hot!, not just in general, but at the very moment that I am writing this article. We are experiencing a major heat wave. This is happening in a lot of other places in the country or even the world right now, but this is a pretty unusual situation for Los Angeles. From a climatic point of view, the LA basin works as a giant air-conditioning system that will keep the temperatures in the 70’s all year long. Usually in the summer there is a marine layer that comes in off the ocean, along with some clouds, that cools things down. This has been called May Grey, June Gloom or even Bummer Summer. Sometimes, like this year for example, the system breaks down and you are desperately in need of a cold fix. Here are a few personal favorites to escape the heat.
Occidental College Pool
This is one of LA’s best kept secrets. Occidental College is in the Eagle Rock area (North of Downtown). It is your picture perfect postcard type of college where they shot the TV show, Beverly Hills 90210, but you will find mostly kids from all over the country that chose “OXY” as an entry to Southern California. Besides having the best library and bookstore in LA for art and critical theory, you can find within their sport facilities the nicest swimming pool ever. Sitting in the middle of a “Pompei Style” atrium is a light blue rectangle of heaven when ones want to escape the summer heat of Los Angeles. The place is almost always empty in the summer, as college kids are away. Perhaps you will only find a couple of college girls working on their tan, turning the place into a James Bond poolside scene. The water is very clean as the pool is used outside of the public hours by the swim and water polo team. It is better to show up early, around noon, to get the water fresh. The place is reserved for the OXY people or nearby institutions like Art Center College of Design, but they rarely ask for your ID. Just walk in as if you have always been coming here…
Point Dume Public State Beach
Another one of LA’s secret pieces of paradise is Point Dume Public State Beach in Malibu. It is a half mile long sandy beach at the bottom of a 100 ft high vertical cliff where you can see the mansions of Barbara Streisand, Johnny Carson and others. The place is always empty, thanks to a poor parking facility allowing only 10 spots. (In fact you can street park a block away but people don’t really know about that, or maybe they are afraid because it ‘s Malibu).
Once you are parked, you walk through the Point Dume natural preserve. It culminates with a historic place of ritual for the Chumash Indian tribes that used to live on this coast. In the right season it is now the perfect place for whale sightings. A steep metallic staircase will bring you down to the beach. After walking on a reef that is a favorite for locals surfers (it is called Big Dume as opposed to Little Dume, the private reef at the other end of the beach), you feel as if you were transported in the final scene of Planet of the Apes (this is where they shot it) and suddenly you are looking for the Statue of Liberty underneath the sand. The more you walk, the less likely you will be to encounter anyone. Around the cliff, arriving at the private sections of the beach, however, you will find dozens of people. They all have the key to the private gate and duplicated it for their friends. Stay on the public side and you will have a much more intimate and private time. The best place to swim is in the middle of the beach. This is where the reef and breakers subside. It is always a little cooler than the Santa Monica bay. There is no pollution at all. The water is crystal clear. Enjoy!
SOME THOUGHTS ON SILVERLAKE
by Barbara Bestor
Silverlake is one of those neighborhoods that just has an amazing style all its own. I first moved here when I was starting at the Southern California Institute of Architecture graduate school. It seemed to me like the only place on earth anyone, a budding architect especially, would ever want to live. I would take walks up in the hills past Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis-Brown house, have drinks at Larry Nicola’s restaurant designed by the then up and coming architecture office Morphosis (where I had a summer job), and hunt down houses by Rudolph Schindler ( my favorite architect ever). Just a little ways east of Hollywood, the neighborhood spreads over hills and around a few lakes in an almost rustic way. Since the early 20th century this area has been populated by non-conformists, starting with its earliest settlers- the early silent movie studios (Charlie Chaplin! Tom Mix!)- and the actors, writers, set painters, etc that came with them. Later, in the 1930s and 40s, progressives, communists, Latinos and a variety of artists all shared this enclave while the rest of the city grew more conservative and divided along economic and racial lines. By the 1970s Silverlake had reinvented itself again as a gay neighborhood, a low-key counterpart to West Hollywood.
One of the most visible results of this history is Silverlake’s richness in modern residential architecture. The most famous local architects in the area, Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra, did some of their best experimental work here, but there are also fantastic houses by Craig Ellwood, John Lautner, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Gregory Ain and more. Though of different generations, these architects tend to share certain concerns: embracing new materials and colors, rethinking the uses and hierarchies of domestic spaces and breaking down the barrier between inside and outside.
Today in Silverlake there are several young firms, my own included, that aspire to continue in this tradition of low key, experimental modernism. Many of the new architects that are in this exhibit- and in the book I put out this year (“bohemian modern; living in silverlake”, Reganbooks, 2006) are not doing mid-century historical revivalism, but trying out new ideas. Schindler really started the regional non-conformist modernism that I subscribe to. Silverlake’s architecture grew up parallel to international style modernism but it developed without the formal orthodoxy. This bohemian strain was supported by three factors- the clients, the climate- all that sun, water and swimming pools- and the vision of the architects themselves (many of them European trained émigrés in the exalted company of Thomas Mann, Arnold Schoenberg, F.W.Murnau and the like). The most distinctive qualities of this work are its informality, rawness, and a large dollop of hedonism.
RADICAL CENTER
By Frank Escher & Ravi GuneWardena
Los Angeles is a very large place with too much to do. On any given night there are lectures, concerts, gallery openings, house parties and floating events at bars and clubs, spread out over a 15 mile radius from somewhere near an imaginary center of somewhere around Fairfax and Wilshire (LACMA). When you first arrive in L.A. it takes a while to find out where things are happening. Once you do find out and get over the initial enthusiasm about the abundance of activities, you start to set limits and hone in on a much smaller radius that you rarely venture out of. Something that you do retain from the occasional forays into the fringe territories is a group of acquaintances that you end up seeing often in your own target circle, who later become friends. If one tries to attend even a modest amount of weekly happenings, the time you have left to spend with these friends is most often at the happenings themselves.
Like how the six Eastside architects came together, many friends, colleagues, and clients end up mingling in the same small circles, which overlap at one time or another. We met Artist Joe Sola in the late 90’s, while subletting a studio from Julie Becker, with whom Joe was collaborating on a film project. We had met Julie the previous year, while some Swiss friends (including curator of Julie’s Zurich Kunsthalle show) were visiting LA. Later Joe asked us to design his house (EG22). Sharon Lockhart (off-map museum installations) and her husband Alex Slade, we met through Mary Goldman and John Tevis, shortly after Mary had sublet their apartment, while setting up her Chinatown Gallery in 1998. That year we began work on the restoration of John Lautner’s Chemosphere (EG10) for publisher Benedikt Taschen, who collected Sharon’s work, and had published art books by her Berlin gallerist Burkhard Riemschneider. Following our collaboration with Sharon on her MCA Chicago installation, we were asked to design a new space for her L.A. gallerists, Blum and Poe (EG4). Our project manager on that job was Brian Hart, who we met through Sharon and had previously worked with artist Jessica Bronson. Mark Grotjahn (Blum & Poe artist) shortly thereafter recommended us to his friends, artists Anthony Pearson and Ramona Trent (EG1). In 2003, while Blum and Poe was being built, Pho Café (EG5) opened. Its owner, the glamorous entrepreneur Hanh Minh Dam was referred to us by an L.A. Curator. Hanh’s husband artist Matthias Poledna collaborated on the Café, which appeared later in an installation by Alex Slade for the 2004 show Topographies. Also in 2003 we met film art directors David and Sandy Wasco in New York (outside of circle) during the Cooper Hewitt Triennial in which we were all included. We found they were living in Silver Lake (inside circle). We were so taken up by one another at the time that we pledged to do something together one day soon.
A similar analysis of friends with other interests, music for example, often brings us back to an overlap in the circles above. Not all end up as clients, but most remain long-term friends that drift in and out from time to time. Like in any other city, it takes a while to find that circle or two, one’s own preferred geographical and psychological zones. Though it’s harder to maintain, even the broader radius usually sticks, with people you see less often. L.A.’s not the center of the world, but it’s not a bad place to be either.
AEROSOLS: LIVING WITH CHEMISTRY
By Alexis Rochas
Gaussian air pollutant dispersion equation
f = crosswind dispersion parameter
g = vertical dispersion parameter
g1 = vertical dispersion with no reflections
g2 = vertical dispersion for reflection from the ground
g3 = vertical dispersion for reflection from an inversion aloft
C = concentration of emissions, in g/m_, at any receptor located
Q = source pollutant emission rate, in g/s
u = horizontal wind velocity along the plume centerline, m/s
H = height of emission plume centerline above ground level, in m
_z = vertical standard deviation of the emission distribution, in m
_y = horizontal standard deviation of the emission distribution, in m
L = height from ground level to bottom of the inversion aloft, in m
exp = the exponential function
Atmospheric dispersion modeling.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A very particular city indeed, and by particular I mean particulate, kind of like made of very small stuff. Like very small stuff, like a few gathering molecules kind of stuff. We don’t like big stuff, like folded boxes kind of stuff, we don’t like. But unfolded stuff is cool, like just before ironing a shirt kind of stuff, when is about to be smoothen but still stretched on the ironing board kind of like. I like going to my friends little gardens kind of stuff, but no those big park things, where nothings at. And the longer the drive the better and the more we like our friends. We have 12, 25, 50 and 100 mile kind of friends. But we also like our friends by the contortions of the getting there kind of stuff. We have straight across the plane kind of friends, you know those people, and friends knotted up some sinuous one lane mountains kind of friends. Also friends we don’t know where they live, since we never got there but well. Yes, very particular. An aggregate of little gardens all very exclusive kind of thing. But the stuff in the air is the best. The little stuff in the air, dude. The gigantic stuff made up of tiny stuff, that’s really cool. The little stuff in the air that comes and goes, the dry stuff and the moist stuff, the little stuff tinkering with the atmosphere. Like a giant lens thing made up of little tiny bits we build with our cars and stuff. Yeah, like a great lens, like a super large lens. And we never know how far we are, like magnify like microscope. Like a fun house, dude, like lenses stretching and contracting the city kind of lens. Like mirror, like smoke. Like the other day and those mountains that showed up out of nowhere, I swear dude. Like big mountains, like San Gabriel mountains, just there down Main street. Like I was coming out at 65 via 110 and Shazam!: mountains. Where are they coming from?, dude. Or rather what happened to the lens? Did they turn it off, man? Or they moved it, those Santa Ana guys, man. They’re dry Huh, like what’s up with all that clear sky and those postcard views, man. So second millennium, man. But I looked west and there it was, man. Jesus, thought they stole it for a while, but there it was casting that 6 o’clock purple or purporange, like a giant TV color that we like. They should paint cars that color man, that would be cool.
OLD MALIBU / NEW JOSHUA TREE
by Alan Koch and Linda Taalman
Joshua Tree High Desert is the new Malibu. Not the Malibu of today (not yet at least) but the Malibu of legend. We will see in the next twenty years if Joshua Tree is destined to become the sorry Malibu of today. There are three important alignments of these two Southern California Colonies: 1. California Grandeur, 2. Frontier Mentality, 3. Outdoor Sporting Cults. Many places in California have one or more of the three principal alignments in common with these two areas, but none have so many categorical parallels.
1. California Grandeur
Both locales are located within the rugged almost supernatural terrain of special areas of California – bracketing Los Angeles on the Eastern and Western edges. Each is cut off from the rest of the nearby mega-city sprawl by mountains, isolated and poised on the edge of human habitation. One can easily imagine a Kaspar David Friedrich painting of the isolated man staring out into the infinite sublime just out the back door of his beach house or desert shack. Super-scale natural disasters visit both places and tend to keep them wild longer than their city counterparts. Two similar events that come to mind are the ’93 Mailbu fire and the recent Sawtooth Complex fire in Pipes Canyon. But ultimately, the California Grandeur is best typified by the Ocean crashing on the Malibu shore at the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains compared with the Giant Boulder formations piled up at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. Unlike the huge distant mountains for instance, they are the two kinds of features you can actually incorporate into your own private world. In terms of real estate at least, ocean-front and boulder-filled sites are the to-die-for properties on the West and East coasts of the megalopolis known as L.A.
2. Frontier Mentality
A Frontier Mentality pervades the local occupation of these areas. As Joan Didion, a former Malibu denizen mentions, people “felling trees in their own interior wilderness” characterize this kind of human spirit. Like the physical isolation, remoteness, and unspoiled land of the frontier itself, people who likewise have these kinds of inner-landscapes are also drawn to the Frontier. Advanced forms of these predilections are represented in the stereotypes of “Beach Bum” and the “Desert Rat” who haunt Malibu and the High Desert respectively. A similar sensibility originally drew Celebrities to Malibu in the early days – the desire to disappear into a rustic hyper-reality and get away temporarily from the average Joes of the city. And now in the High Desert a migration of the rich and famous is underway because there is nowhere left that is so near to L.A. – and that also feels far away as does Joshua Tree High Desert. Certainly there is nowhere with as great of charms and amazing local geology as the Joshua Trees. And, importantly, there is nowhere so near where large pieces of remarkable land still can be found. The rustic totems of the respective areas, The Pier in the Malibu of old and now with Pappy and Harriett’s in Pipe’s Canyon shine like a beacon to those looking for an “old-school” California fix while also serving as a gravitational center for the otherwise private and fairly far flung communities of the post-aquisitional types. A certain lawlessness too, lingers in the attempts to occupy these zones as well. Wars between locals and visitors are manifested in Malibu with illegal signs and guards hired to prevent people from using one of a number public right-of-ways to the beach. Similarly, in the high desert, roads can sometimes be blocked for no apparent reason or, as is more often the case, simply blocked by false “private road” signs. And Building / Zoning in both jurisdictions is notoriously difficult. The Costal Commission confuses and delays landowners in Malibu, while tortoise habitat and old-timer building inspectors plague those in the high desert who desire to build. However, this is part of the attraction. Once you get beyond the initial legal hurdles, it feels as if no one is watching. It’s as if they know it is impossible to actually govern the area, so they attempt to discourage most people by simply scaring them off.
3. Outdoor Sporting Cults
Finally, the arcane inner-looking worlds of outdoor sporting cults have strong ties to the two places. The sporting attitude could be best described as Man vs. Nature with discipline, dedication and loyalty being foremost traits of its adherents. In Malibu of course it’s the surfers. They are the original domesticators of the California ocean. Prior to surfing, the ocean was viewed more as a harsh yet mysteriously beautiful natural element, much like a far flung mountain in the distance. Surfers turned California’s beaches into playgrounds and thereby tamed much of the wild feeling of Malibu. This eventually lead to its decline as a frontier. In the high desert, rock climbers have long held court in terms of the prevailing imported aesthetic, but the climbers have yet to ruin the area by attracting any sizeable influx of “weekend climbers”. In both the case of Malibu and the Joshua Tree, these sub-cultures have a great deal to do with the vibe of gentrification. It’s still an open question in the high desert however.
More and more, Joshua Tree High Desert will grow along lines similar to the path Malibu’s growth. Now is the time when the seeds are being planted for the eventual transformation that is sure to come. Following the Sawtooth Complex fire, who will be the ones to come in and build in the void left by the burning? Is it the next “Malibu Colony” for the savvy city dweller?
Kelly Marie Martin and David Jones first starting making sounds in the summer of 1995 while living in New York City. Stints in bands in San Francisco had brought them into earshot of one another's style and they forged a collaboration that has evolved over the last decade in the forms of live bands, sound installations, film scores, and in the recent release of a full length album of original songs as an acoustic/ electric duo. Both have also honed their chops playing in country and early American music idioms; Kelly presently plays guitar in Triple Chicken Foot, an old-time string band and David was a member of country-rock group CB Brand. Their brand new album, Kelly and David as the Twilight Auguries blends the variety of their experience into a group of eleven unique songs of longing and loss, weaving folk forms into original compositions with soaring vocal harmonies and lyrics that intrigue and beguile. While contemporary comparisons are evident, they don’t stop there. Their unique character studies are informed by a deep relationship to life’s lessons of their own past, literature and the historical styles of classic songwriting. In these 11 songs, beauty reveals itself in a variety of disguises. They have tea with a mouse, witness a standoff between a wolf and a coyote, learn spells from a shapeshifter, and a sometime lover reveals himself to them as the Devil. Look for it now at cdbaby.com or go to myspace.com/kellyndavid to learn more.
Bedroom Walls (now Fol Chen) Hailed as "the next breakout group from Los Angeles" by the SF Bay Guardian, BEDROOM WALLS enchant fans with a voluptuous sound they call ROMANTICORE. Armed with a narcotic grace and a bone-dry sense of humor, the band's songs aim to instruct listeners in the proper use of melancholy. The L.A. WEEKLY says: "Music has to be liked a bit too much. Bedroom Walls make that easy, playing songs with awkward perfection. It's shamelessly melodic, kind of ambient, kind of spaced-out, surprisingly clever. It's like your little sister on drugs, insouciant and a bit off-the-wall." Or, as Bedroom Walls told the LOS ANGELES TIMES, "We just want to make people sad."
Barbara Bestor is the principal of Barbara Bestor Architecture in Silverlake, and author of the recent “ Bohemian Modern, Living in Silverlake”. She is a graduate of Harvard and SCI-Arc and has been in practice since 1992.
Escher GuneWardena's work addresses issues of sustainability, affordability and the dialogue between form and construction. They seek to establish simple formal manifestations of the complexities of each project, investigating the sublimated characteristics intrinsic to the work itself. Published internationally, they were one of six architectural firms included in the 2003 National Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York and in 2004 they were selected by dwell magazine to design the Dwell Home II, a prototype for a sustainable house. They are currently in the invited exhibition OPEN HOUSE: Intelligent Living by Design, organized jointly by the Vitra Design Museum and the Art Center College of Design, exploring the topic of the future house. Their interest in contemporary art has led to various collaborations with artists including the installation design of artist Sharon Lockhart's current work PINE FLAT. Frank Escher grew up in Switzerland and studied Architecture at the ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule) Zürich. Ravi GuneWardena, originally from Sri Lanka, was trained at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. In 1997 they jointly edited the architectural guide "Cruising Industrial Los Angeles" for the LA Conservancy.
Fritz Haeg Studio was established in New York City in 1995 and was moved to Los Angeles in 1999. We create places and spaces of poetry that reconcile the qualities of a particular location with needs and desires of diverse humans. Most of our projects expand seamlessly and without distinction from furniture to interior space to architecture to landscape out to urban space and beyond. We are interested in subverting the role of the human as the dominant occupant of the planet. With the garden as a useful model for a balanced relationship between human need and natural resource we are looking for radical ways to create an architecture of harmony.
Francois Perrin was born in Paris in 1968 where he studied Architecture at the Beaux-Arts. He moved to Los Angeles in 2000 to establish his practice and since has completed residential projects and several exhibition designs. He has taught at the Art Center College of Design, Sci-Arc and Cal Poly Pomona and has lectured recently at the MAK in Vienna, the Jan Van Eick Academie in Maastrich and Columbia University in New York. He is the editor/curator of the book and exhibition “ Yves Klein : Air Architecture” and his work has been featured in the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum, The Architect’s Newspaper, Metropolis, Sunset, ID and V Magazine. He is currently working on a new residential project in the Hollywood Hills and an outdoor space for the Quiksilver Headquarters in Huntington Beach, California.
Alexis Rochas is the founder of I/O, a Los Angeles practice focusing on Open Source architectural methodologies and systems through the development of dynamic technologies and implementation processes. His recent work includes the AEROMADS project, which outlines an architectural system that combines air pressure and high-strength intelligent fabrics as a tectonic solution for the creation of minimal mass, self-sustaining structures. His work has been exhibited at the A+D Museum NextGen, Spot on Schools 2006, Florence, 2005 INDEX Awards, Copenhagen; MAK Center for Art and Architecture(2005); TELIC(2005); Watts Towers Arts Center(2005); Sundown Salon: Baroque Geode; Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, in collaboration with Lebbeus Woods; and at the Bienal de Buenos Aires. His work has been published in a number of architectural journals including Metropolis, Architectural Record, and Domus magazine. A member of SCI-Arc's design faculty since 2003, Rochas has headed projects through the Community Outreach and Design Build Program, including the FAB Arts Market Temporal Gallery, LINC Housing community grounds prototyping, SCI-Arc's Lecture Hall Acoustical Treatment, and the LAMP Community's Sun Shelter Pavilion. He is the recipient of the 2004 City of Los Angeles Design Award, the 2002 New York Society of Architects M.W Del Gaudio Award for Excellence in Total Design, and the 1996 Award for Excellence in Design from the Architectural department of the University of Buenos Aires.
Taalman Koch Architecture is an architecture practice led by Linda Taalman and Alan Koch addressing a broad range of scales and approaches for the built environment, involving the research of pioneering and speculative projects and engaging and conspiring with creative individuals. Founded on the principals of experimentation and speculation -- innovation and fabrication, TK Architecture’s mission is to continue to mediate thorough investigations of the built environment and stimulate dialog with the community in the production of well-built and thoughtful environments.