Design and Architecture

The City of West Hollywood wants to make the Sunset Strip the spectacle it was back in its heyday. So it's hosting a design competition for an innovative billboard. Also, DnA boards a mega-ship at the Port of Long Beach, the largest container ship to ever dock in the US, and learns about the impact of global transportation on our infrastructure and environment.

Do you hate digital billboards? A lot of people do, and so the City of West Hollywood, in a bid to create a lovable digital billboard on a site it owns on the Sunset Strip, has created a design competition for ideas.

The long-awaited Expo Line extension to Santa Monica opens this weekend. What does it mean for mobility in the Southland? Meanwhile, some transit dreamers are working on a vehicle that would leave light rail in the dust: Hyperloop. In this week’s “Modern Trades” we visit a lighting factory in the City of Industry and a school in Van Nuys to find out how high schoolers are being prepared for high-tech manufacturing jobs.

All aboard the Expo Line! Starting May 20 you can ride all the way from downtown LA to Santa Monica for the first time in over six decades. Metro officials say this is part of a future where cars are just one of several viable modes of transportation in Los Angeles. And, the director and producer of the new dystopian film High-Rise talk about architecture as a storytelling device to tell a story about class and morality.

Here's a job that can't go overseas -- solar panel installation. We meet the laborers who are attending a "rooftop university" in Long Beach. Plus, a conversation with Wade Graham about "castles," "slabs" and the shaping of cities, as Los Angeles goes through a transformation; and Anthony Iannacci discusses "Hollywood Interiors" and what makes for uniquely Angeleno style and design.

Today four competing schemes for a renewed Pershing Square were unveiled. Tonight the design teams will present them to the public at Broadway's Palace Theater — and the crowd is expected to reach capacity. 

Four finalists present schemes for redesigning Pershing Square, and their approaches will be a litmus test for competing views on what makes public space work -- lots of programming or strong design? Gigantic plastic containers leave Pershing Square on a journey of environmental education through art. And when William Wegman's Weimaraners pose on Eames and Nakashima chairs, you get a very stylish dog story.

On the campaign trail, presidential candidates have been talking a lot about the price of college. But does a four-year degree make sense for kids who might be better suited for a trade?