Los Angeles

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts announces TechnoCRAFT, a major new design exhibition that charts current movements blurring the boundary between designer and consumer. Curated by acclaimed industrial designer Yves Béhar, TechnoCRAFT looks at the different ways that consumers are personalizing design in efforts to assert creativity and individuality in an age of mass-production.

Read more: http://www.dwell.com/events/techno-craft.html#ixzz22JEusWwe

Action/Reaction presents different ways California designers have responded to current events, whether sociopolitical or economic, in a creative or innovative way. In a departure from the past juried competitions, this year, the PMCA invited a notable design professional to curate each category in response to the theme of "Action/Reaction. Rose Apodaca curates Fashion; Stewart Reed curates Transportation Design; Louise Sandhaus curates Graphic Design; Alissa Walker curates Product Design; and for the first time in CDB history, Architecture is included as a category, curated by Frances Anderton.

Read more: http://www.dwell.com/events/action-reaction-at-the-pmca.html#ixzz22JDP6rqJ

The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design announces a major retrospective exhibition:

UNFINISHED BUSINESS – 25 Years of Discourse in Los Angeles, running from July 13th through August 26th, 2012 at the WUHO Gallery in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design has been at the center of the city’s architectural discourse since 1987. Through each decade – the scrappy 1980s, the experimental 1990s, and the booming 2000s – the Forum has vigorously interrogated the culture of architecture and urban design in Los Angeles. Although geographically positioned on the far edge of the continent, the organization nonetheless impacts the discipline at large: Forum events and programming routinely introduce emerging talent; issues of contemporary design are captured in its exhibitions; and its publications and competitions speculate on urbanism and often challenge the conventions of what architecture means in L.A.

The retrospective Unfinished Business unpacks the organization’s archive, revisiting a history of commentary and debate. In looking backward, the exhibition finds within the Forum’s history the architectural questions, urban design conversation starters, and critical loose ends that are just as relevant now as they were over the past quarter century. Unfinished Business doesn’t come to any fixed conclusion, but opens up a rich and potentially provocative dialogue.

Dwell on Design is the West Coast's largest design event. Curated by the editors of Dwell, the three-day celebration brings together the best and brightest products, services, and thought leaders in modern design today for a series of conversations, demonstrations, home tours, and much more. In addition to featuring over 350 exhibitors on the show floor, Dwell on Design encourages an ongoing design dialogue, showcasing over 70 presentations on three separate stages. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit dwellondesign.com.

Read more: http://www.dwell.com/events/dwell-on-design-2012.html#ixzz1viS7iRLt

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This exhibition is the first major study of California midcentury modern design. With more than 300 objects—furniture, ceramics, metalwork, fashion and textiles, and industrial and graphic design—the exhibition examines the state’s role in shaping the material culture of the entire country. Organized into four thematic areas, the exhibition aims to elucidate the 1951 quote from émigré Greta Magnusson Grossman that is incorporated into the exhibition’s title: California design “is not a superimposed style, but an answer to present conditions…It has developed out of our own preferences for living in a modern way."
http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/californiadesign

Bill Stern, executive director of the Museum of California Design in Los Angeles, discusses how local materials, war industries, and the burgeoning population conspired to make California—America's cultural frontier—a preeminent source of new products and new looks for the entire nation. Stern served as consulting curator on the special exhibition California Design, 1930–1965: "Living in a Modern Way," on view now through June 3.

AIA|LA Spring Home Tour 2012, PALISADES TO BRENTWOOD, sponsored by Gruen Associates

AIA|LA is thrilled to take you West for round two of the 2012 Spring Home Tours Series, PALISADES TO BRENTWOOD on May 6th from 11 am - 4 pm, sponsored by Gruen Associates.

click to purchase MAY 6 Tour Tickets

With such an array of luxurious and spacious architectural treasures, selecting homes for a tour in neighborhoods like Brentwood and the Palisades is not easy. Yet, every season we go out of our way to bring you amazing homes and this season is no exception.

Carlo Caccavale, Associate Director for AIA Los Angeles said that,\"these homes represent the best combination in regards to what Los Angeles design and architecture has to offer, in terms of scale, position, lifestyle and the glam factor.\" \"The Glam Factor\" indeed, these homes are glamorous and opulent! Come see them in person on May 6th!

To get your dash of deluxe Los Angeles living, join us for PALISADES TO BRENTWOOD, May 6th from 11 am - 4pm. The tour is self-driven, self guided, rain or shine.
Designers featured on PALISADES TO BRENTWOOD include:

Warren W. Wagner, AIA
Barbara Callas, AIA
Michael Lehrer, FAIA
William Hefner, AIA

http://www.aialosangeles.org/event/aia-la-spring-home-tour-2012-palisade...

Free tickets: http://www.eventbrite.com/org/2049129195

Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it? And how does the design of our cities affect our lives? By exploring a diverse range of urban design projects in dozens of cities around the world, from massive infrastructure initiatives to temporary interventions, Urbanized frames a global discussion on the future of cities.

Gary Hustwit is an independent filmmaker based in New York and London. He has produced eight feature documentaries, including the award-winning I Am Trying To Break Your Heart about the band Wilco; and Moog, the documentary about electronic music pioneer Robert Moog.

In 2007 he made his directorial debut with Helvetica, a documentary about graphic design and typography. The film marked the beginning of a design film trilogy, with Objectified, about industrial design and product design following in 2009. Urbanized, about the design of cities, was released in 2011.

The final documentary in director Gary Hustwit's design film trilogy, Urbanized features some of the world's foremost architects, planners, policymakers, and thinkers. It includes Sir Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, Jan Gehl, Oscar Niemeyer, Amanda Burden, Enrique Peñalosa, Alejandro Aravena, Eduardo Paes, Rahul Mehrotra, Ellen Dunham-Jones, Ricky Burdett, James Corner, Michael Sorkin, Bruce Katz, Candy Chang, and Edgar Pieterse, as well as the extraordinary citizens who have affected change in their cities.

“Gary Hustwit’s fascinating, idea-packed... documentary survey[s] both the challenges and promises facing some of the world’s important cities. Here is Paris, yes, and New York... and here are the slums of Mumbai and the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. But have you heard about the bike lanes of Bogotá, Colombia? About the walkways threaded through the townships on the outskirts of Cape Town? About the new housing projects that are replacing the informal settlements in Santiago, Chile?

Urbanized is less focused on the history of cities than on the way they are adapting to the challenges of the present and future, notably climate change and population growth. Against [earlier] follies, the case is made for pedestrian-friendly metropolitan cores, bicycle lanes and an ethic that combines the knowledge of experts with the desires and innovations of local residents.

Mr. Hustwit relies more on the testimony of professionals than on the wisdom of ordinary people, but that is in keeping with the overall mood of the film, which is lively, curious and pedagogical. Like a really good class taught by a team of enthusiastic professors, Urbanized supplies grist for many late-night arguments or solitary ruminations. It is worth venturing out of your room, climbing on your bike or boarding a low-emissions bus and fighting your way through a crowd to see.” - A.O. Scott, New York Times

Enter campus from 7th street.

Turn on to East or West Campus Drive.

Make first turn on to South Campus Drive.

Turn on to the South Campus Loop.

Follow the Loop to the entrance to Lot 7

Park in Lot 7 - $5

May 6, 2012 Modern Art & Design Auction
The upcoming May 6, 2012 Modern Art & Design Auction will include over 100 works from an important Santa Barbara collection, featuring fine art and sculpture by George Rickey, Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, and Karl Benjamin.

Additional offerings include works by 20th century artists such as Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Rauschenberg, R.M. Schindler, Ed Ruscha, Greta Grossman, Karel Appel, Louise Nevelson, Charles Eames, Claes Oldenburg, and Richard Neutra.

Auction Preview
April 25 – May 5; open everyday from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

http://www.lamodern.com/

Flowers, plants and the landscape were an important part of life at the Schindler House (1922), as evidenced in photographs recording the evolutions of the house and surrounding garden. While neither Rudolph nor Pauline Schindler ever traveled to Japan, it has often been noted that the house and garden evokes a Japanese sensibility in materials, proportions, and atmosphere. Further comparisons have been made between the diagonal compositions of Japanese woodcuts and R.M. Schindler's architectural renderings. Following the circuitous connections between the Schindlers and Japan, Sogetsu LAB offers a tribute in flowers and bamboo to the original inhabitants of the house.

Sogetsu is one of the major schools of Ikebana flower arranging founded in Japan, but now followed by practitioners throughout the world. The Sogetsu School was established by Sofu Teshigahara (1900-1979) in 1927, and is now headed by his granddaughter Akane Teshigahara. Though deeply rooted in Japanese tradition, the school embraced the evolving requirements of the modern age.

Throughout the 95-year history of the school, numerous artists have collaborated in projects with the head masters at Sogetsu. The list of notable collaborators includes Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, Michel Tapie, Sam Francis, Niki de Saint Phalle, Shusaku Arakawa, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Isamu Noguchi and George Mathieu. In 1962, John Cage, another tenant of the Schindler house, created a stir in the Tokyo art scene with a performance in the school's "Sogetsu Contemporary Series". This event brings Sogetsu at the Schindler House full circle.

Los Angeles Sogetsu teacher Haruko Takeichi will lead the design and construction of a bamboo sculpture in the front garden. An exhibition of Ikebana installations by local practitioners will be staged throughout the house. Local Sogetsu teacher and architect Ravi GuneWardena will conduct the Ikebana demonstrations.

http://www.makcenter.org/MAK_Exhibitions_Upcoming.php