Design and Architecture

Singer-songwriter Dar Williams has spent years on the road and along the way she learned a lot about America’s small towns and what makes them thrive. She talks about her book, What I Found in a Thousand Towns, and plays songs that relate to those themes. 

The La Brea Tar Pits has a new design team that won’t uproot the mammoth family from its lake of tar. DnA talks to architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi of Weiss/Manfredi about how they plan to maintain the “thereness” and “spectacle” of the prehistoric site while making it more open and attractive to visitors.

Once upon a time, tract homes were seen as bland and boring, and then came Cinderella Homes. We’ll hear how a 1950s fantasy trend in suburban design made Southern California homeowners’ wishes come true.

Could the “Great Stone Mother” become home for the destitute? LA County is looking to transform some of the properties it owns into affordable and supportive housing. One possible site is the old General Hospital at LAC+USC Medical Center.

How do you make your own architectural statement on a street filled with eye-grabbing Eric Owen Moss buildings? Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee talk about bringing “decorum,” pillowed tilt-up concrete and hidden outdoor rooms to their subtle remodel of UCLA’s graduate art studios on Hayden Avenue in Culver City. 

And we learn about the massive, sometimes illegal, global trade in used stuff and where it winds up after we've tossed it out. Fun fact: The Japanese hoard as much as Americans.

A dramatic decision by a little-known planning agency may impact how much new housing goes up in your city. The board of the Southern California Association of Governments, or SCAG, voted recently to allocate more housing in coastal, job-rich cities in Southern California rather than in rural areas. That means over 3,000 new units for Beverly Hills, which had planned to build three. DnA talks to the mayors of Culver City and Beverly Hills about their different approaches to new housing construction, and asks if car-based land-use in the Southland is coming to the end of the road.

And ‘tis the season for holiday craft fairs. So why does West Coast Craft, new to LA this year, insist it is not a craft fair? DnA talks to WCC creative director Paulina Nassar about the "West Coast aesthetic," the intersection of fine art and craft, and WCC's place in a fairly saturated craft marketplace.

Ray Kappe, creator of stunning homes and a highly original architecture school, has passed at age 92. DnA gives tribute to a well-lived life.

Did you know that you can learn about the fuel usage of a car by its show color? We talk to “communication color” consultant Sabine Lapine. 

And, still planning your Thanksgiving meal? How about cooking something tailored for the art and design fans in your life? Esther Choi explains “Le Corbuffet.”

The city of LA is launching a competition to design a new streetlight. LA's chief design officer Christopher Hawthorne tells DnA about the history of LA's streetlights, and what the city is looking for in a new streetlight.

And when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, there were only 30 walls separating nation states around the world. Now there are over 77 -- and most of those have gone up in this century. A show at the Annenberg Space for Photography explores why walls are a global phenomenon.

Marciano Art Foundation is closing. The news came days after visitor services associates announced their intention to unionize. DnA attends a protest outside the Wilshire museum to hear about the role of low-paid labor in the highly lucrative world of contemporary art.

Plus, more changes are coming to Museum Row, but LA-based architects aren’t getting to design them. We look at the shortlist for the La Brea Tar Pits expansion, and the role of localism in a global architecture profession.

The co-founder of Studio 54 is opening a new boutique hotel in West Hollywood. Veteran hotelier Ian Schrager talks about his colorful life and career creating spaces to attract the in-crowd. And filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer tells us about the dramatic life and civic impact of Schrager. 

DnA also visits another site that was designed as a social magnet: Horton Plaza, a postmodern icon designed by the late architect Jon Jerde. But the 1985 mall has become a ghost of its former self. DnA learns what’s in store for the complex and how some San Diegans are honoring a building that brought them much joy.

The Getty Fire has spread to hundreds of acres, with tens of thousands of people forced to evacuate. But the Getty Center, with its priceless collection of art and artifacts, was designed to withstand the flames. Plus, how safe is the fire retardant that air tankers are spraying onto the flames?

If you’re planning to dress up for Halloween, you may be thinking of those old spooky favorites: a mummy, a vampire, Frankenstein’s monster. But have you ever wondered about the origin stories of those scary creatures? You can find out at the Natural History Museum, in an exhibit called “Natural History of Horror.” 

And, sneaker culture has become a nearly $20 billion industry in the U.S. alone, but it’s also a celebration of design innovation. Sneakerhead and KCRW DJ Anthony Valadez joins us for a tour of Sneakertopia, a new pop-up themed experience at HHLA. We also meet curator Justin Fredericks and artists Man One and Sophie Mazzaro.

Saudi Arabia has an image problem. But it has become a new frontier for American artists and designers. We look at the controversy surrounding site-specific art festival Desert X's planned expansion to Saudi Arabia, and we talk to an LA-based consultant for the futuristic megacity of Neom. Both are bankrolled by Mohammad Bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. How do designers deal with the blowback?