At first glance, LA might look like a disorganized jigsaw puzzle or a city that has evolved by accident, but a deeper look reveals a city with innovative infrastructure and urban planning, commercial and civic buildings, housing experiments, and other architectural forms. The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in LA is collaborative celebration of Southern California’s lasting impact on modern architecture that looks at these lesser known aspects of our city’s design history. LADF features seven of these programs and exhibitions as part of the festival.
Curator’s Gallery Talk, In Focus: Ed Ruscha – June 12
Rendering Los Angeles architecture and schematized street maps, Ed Ruscha’s works are presented with titles like “Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights” and “The End,” clearly reflecting the Hollywood movie industry’s influence on this Californian’s creative perspective. June 12 at the Getty Museum, an hour long tour will be given by Curator Virginia Heckert and Assistant Curator of Collection Development John Tain for the Curator’s Gallery Talk, In Focus: Ed Ruscha. Responsible for documenting by photo the buildings on Sunset Strip and Hollywood Boulevard, Ed Ruscha has become an icon in Southern California’s art history. To attend, meet at the J. Paul Getty Museum Entrance Hall under the stairs at 2:15 p.m on June 12.
Untitled: Variations in Design Practice – June 16
The Untitled: Variations in Design Practice Symposium at Otis College of Art and Design integrates established artists with graduate students, challenging both to combine knowledge and solve the limitations of design today. This symposium will focus on assessing meaning and adapting form through lectures, exhibitions and collaboration. To rejuvenate design creativity, Untitled: Variations in Design Practice has a goal of sparking connections between international practitioners and aspiring students. The 3rd year of this bi-annual symposium takes place June 16, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Otis College of Art and Design.
Modern Skyline Walking Tour – June 15 to June 29
Emerging from a vacant lot over 200 years ago, Pershing Square is Los Angeles’s oldest public park, declared a public square for common citizen use in 1866. This summer, Perishing Square becomes part of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A., as the site for the Modern Skyline Walking Tour. This tour peruses L.A.’s Central Business District every Saturday at 2:00 p.m. The mile and a half of skyscrapers, plazas, and public art surrounding Perishing Square chronicles the progression of architectural trends, allowing for Pacific Standard Time’s Modern Skyline Walking Tour through history.
Discover the stories behind landmarks like the Bonaventure Hotel to the Southern California Edison Building. Tickets can be purchased with exact change at Olive Street and 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles. Arrive 15 minutes prior to the scheduled tours in the center of the park, near the mini-groves of orange trees.
Members of the Los Angeles Conservancy receive half off the full ticket price of $10. See the Los Angeles Conservancy page for more information.
The Presence of the Past: Peter Zumthor Reconsiders LACMA – June 13 to the 30
Los Angeles County Museum of Art is looking into a little cosmetic surgery as part of their ten-year expansion and renovation plan, the Transformation. The Presence of the Past: Peter Zumthor Reconsiders LACMA exhibition open June 13th to June 30th features the process and proposed expansion designs from Peter Zumthor for LACMA’s east campus.
Peter Zumthor plans are geared toward creating a strong connection between LACMA’s architecture and the ground it sits on, Hancock Park. Zumthor is an experienced Swiss architect whose creative efforts and intellect grace design communities internationally. “I am not intimidated at all by [LACMA’s] great size,” Zumthor said, “but I am astonished that I am doing this museum.” The exhibit featuring Peter Zumthor’s plans and discoveries is open June 13 to June 30.
A Confederacy of Heretics Symposium – June 14 and June 15
A Confederacy of Heretics Symposium re-illuminates an exhibition which changed Los Angeles in a matter of ten weeks. The symposium refocuses the public lens looking at Los Angeles, reminding Angelinos of the architecture that has put this city in the heart of design history. The symposium was curated by Southern California Institute of Architecture Director Eric Owen Moss, and through models, drawings and media, it pays homage to LA’s first gallery solely focused on architecture, the Architecture Gallery. Displayed in the home of architect Thom Mayne in 1979, ten displays from emerging designers were shown in ten weeks.
A Confederacy of Heretics Symposium will be held in the W. M. Keck Lecture Hall at Southern California Institute of Architecture. Take a look June 14 at 3:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., or June 15, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. to see these priceless artifacts of Angelino history.
Film Screening, SMOG (1962) – June 13
The Getty Center is taking an unconventional approach towards sightseeing. Their Harold Williams Auditorium will host a film screening June 13 at 7:00 p.m., sharing many of the acclaimed constructions in Los Angeles through the 1962 film SMOG. We see the city from the standpoint of the main character, an estranged Italian attorney, as he surveys the City of Angels for two days. From the LAX airport and the oil wells of Culver City, director Franco Rossi’s film SMOG has captured footage essential to understanding Los Angeles
2X8 TAUT and EMERGE Exhibitions – June 5th to June 30th
Institutions all over California are choosing students’ work to be displayed June 5th to June 30th at A+D Architecture and Design Museum for the 2X8 TAUT and EMERGE Exhibitions. The mission of 2×8, established by the AIA|LA Academic Outreach Committee, is to extend scholarship funds and prizes to students on the cusp of design innovation, securing a successful and progressive future for the architecture and design communities. A handful of top design institutions have each hand-picked two projects displaying the core vision of their institution. See which student represents them at the 2X8 TAUT and EMERGE Exhibitions in the A+D Architecture and Design Museum June 5th to June 30th. To make a donation and learn more about the exhibition, visit aplusd.org/exhibition-future/2×8-taut.
