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Christopher Hawthorne

Rebecca Solnit and Christopher Hawthorne | Stories from the City

Rebecca Solnit
In Conversation With Christopher Hawthorne
Thursday, November 10, 2016
01:18:42
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Episode Summary

What makes a place? The stories of a city are inexhaustible and contradictory as cities themselves are in constant conflict between memory and erasure. Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit’s latest work in a trilogy of atlases (New York, New Orleans, San Francisco) portrays the myriad ways we coexist and move through a city depending on our race, gender, age and so much more.  In conversation with architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, Solnit expands our ideas of how cities are imagined and considers how they might look in the immediate future. Join a discussion with two people who have thought deeply about the possibilities of the infinite city.


Participant(s) Bio

Rebecca Solnit is a prolific writer, and the author of many books including Savage Dreams, Storming the Gates of Paradise, and the best-selling atlases Infinite City and Unfathomable City, all from UC Press. She received the Corlis Benefideo Award for Imaginative Cartography from the North American Cartographic Information Society for her work on the previous atlases.

Christopher Hawthorne is architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times. Before coming to the Times he was architecture critic for Slate and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the Washington Post, Metropolis, Architect, Domus, I.D., Print, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and Architectural Record, among many other publications. He is the author, with Alanna Stang, of The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture, published by Princeton Architectural Press.


Never Built: Los Angeles

Panel discussion with Greg Goldin, Christopher Hawthorne, Mia Lehrer, and Sam Lubell. Moderated by Alan Hess, author and architect.
Co-presented with the A+D Architecture and Design Museum > Los Angeles
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
01:15:56
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Episode Summary

What might our city look like if the master plans of prominent architects had been brought to fruition? This panel—including architects, an architectural curator and the L.A. Times’ architecture critic—looks at those visionary works, which held great potential to re-form Los Angeles, yet were undermined by institutions and infrastructure. Can L.A.’s civic future be shaped from these unrealized lessons of the past?


Participant(s) Bio

Greg Goldin has written widely about architecture and urban affairs for Los Angeles Magazine, L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, and Architect's Newspaper. He is the curator of Windshield Perspective, a Getty Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. now showing at A+D Architecture and Design Museum > Los Angeles. He is co-curator of Never Built: Los Angeles and co-author of the book of the same title.

Christopher Hawthorne is architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times. Before coming to the Times he was architecture critic for Slate and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the Washington Post, Metropolis, Architect, Domus, I.D., Print, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and Architectural Record, among many other publications. He is the author, with Alanna Stang, of The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture.

Mia Lehrer is the founder of Mia Lehrer + Associates, known for its wide spectrum of design and development of ambitious public and private projects, including urban revitalization developments, large urban parks, and complex commercial projects. She is internationally recognized for her progressive landscape designs, working with such natural landmarks as parks, lakes, and rivers, coupled with her advocacy for ecology and people-friendly public space. Lehrer believes that great landscape design coupled with sustainability has the power to enhance the livability and quality of life in our cities and, in doing so, improve by great measure the quality of our environment.

Sam Lubell is the West Coast Editor of the Architect’s Newspaper. He has written five books about architecture: Never Built: Los Angeles, Paris 2000+, London 2000+, Living West, and Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, New York Magazine, Architectural Record, Architect Magazine, Architectural Review, and several other publications. His exhibition Never Built: Los Angeles opens on July 27.

Alan Hess is an architect, historian, and author whose nineteen books on modern architecture and urbanism include monographs on Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner, and the architectural histories of Las Vegas, Palm Springs, the Ranch House, and Googie architecture. Hess holds a Master of Architecture degree, was a National Arts Journalism Fellow at Columbia University's School of Journalism, and was the recipient of a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. As a preservationist, Hess qualified the oldest remaining McDonald’s drive-in restaurant, located in Downey, for the National Register of Historic Places.


Mid-Century Modern: Architecture, Photography, and the Good Life in Cold War California

Thursday, January 17, 2013
01:04:36
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Episode Summary

Join us for a conversation about the hugely influential photographer Maynard L. Parker, who aimed his lens at the mid-century masterworks of the L.A. architects and designers whose homes embodied the American dream during a time of demographic transitions, Cold War anxieties, and a suburban society driven to consume.


Participant(s) Bio

Maynard L. Parker (1900-1976) built a career making residential spaces look their alluring best. Based in Los Angeles, Parker was one of postwar America’s most prolific commercial photographers, his sun-kissed style of photography offering a seductive domestic vision to a new consumer age. Parker’s work appeared in House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Better Homes and Gardens, Sunset, and other popular home and design magazines of the 1930s through the 1960s. His lens revealed the homes and lifestyles of socialites and movie stars, the masterworks of internationally acclaimed architects and designers, and the modest ranch houses, tidy gardens, and new interiors which embodied the American dream.

Jennifer A. Watts is curator of photographs at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, where her exhibitions, research, and writing has primarily focused on the photography of California and the American West. She has coauthored several books, including This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in Los Angeles Photographs; Edward Weston: A Legacy; and The Great Wide Open: Panoramic Photographs of the American West. Watts is the curator of the recent exhibition, “A Strange and Fearful Interest: Death, Mourning, and Memory in the American Civil War.”

Christopher Hawthorne is architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times. Before coming to the Times he was architecture critic for Slate and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the Washington Post, Metropolis, Architect, Domus, I.D., Print, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and Architectural Record, among many other publications. He is the author, with Alanna Stang, of The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture, published by Princeton Architectural Press.

D. J. Waldie is the author of books, essays and blogs about Los Angeles and Southern California. He is a contributing writer at Los Angeles Magazine and a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times. His commentary and reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He is widely known for his award-winning memoir, Holy Land. His most recent book is House, in collaboration with Diane Keaton. He blogs at KCET.org.


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