This weekend offered more than one opportunity for Angelenos to Dwell on Design. On Saturday, as the sun disappeared, conference-goers made their way from the Los Angeles Convention Center, up Figueroa Street to the Spring Arts Tower, a converted nineteenth century bank in Downtown LA’s historic core. Tonight, the former vaults trade bank tellers for storytellers; this is the venue for Design East of La Brea’s (deLaB) City Listening, a series of readings on design and architecture. “It’s the official Saturday night event—for the design writing community, that is!” host Alissa Walker tells me.

I can’t help but agree. Many prominent figures of the West Coast design media are present—with half as many seats. The event is a victim of its own success. Yet fifteen speakers are still ready to take to the stage and brave the raucous audience to muse on Los Angeles design.

Frances Anderton gives the audience an insider’s—literally—look in “Living with Gehry,” speaking of her twenty years spent in a Gehry-designed apartment building in Ocean Park, Santa Monica. The host of KCRW’s DnA amusingly observers, through her own user experience, that despite his “SoCal-Starchitect” credentials and reputation, Gehry is also sensible maker of livable homes and “at core a Canadian architect, who builds to keep out the cold.”

Frances Anderton of KCRW’s DnA: Design and Architecture, photo by Monica Orozco

Joe Linton takes a look at the alteration of the LA River from the meandering flood-prone waterway at the city’s founding to the drainage ditch like concrete construction depicted in films like Grease and Terminator. He speculates on plans to revert the river to something slightly less cement-based and also notes that while it may never be restored to its natural state, designs to come may create something more habitable for both nature and Los Angeles city-life alike.

Marissa Gluck offers something rather hideous; a snarky rant on horrendously designed houses on the LA market. There’s a fine line between insanity and genius, and “like the Supreme Court’s ruling on pornography,” Gluck can’t give you criteria. “I just know,” she offers. The next ten minutes of laughter and incredulous gasping are like The Architects Newspaper meets TMZ. Out of context it could be taken as mean-spirited, but like in real estate, the important thing here is location, location, location!

Chris Nicols, Los Angeles Magazine, photo by Monica Orozco

Christopher Hawthorne deemed his original reading choice inappropriate for the venue after hearing the dozen preceding him, and instead, to the amusement of the audience, pulled up his 2007 piece for the Los Angeles Times, Bye-Bye Bungalow, on an iPhone. His own act of replacement mirrors Hawthorne’s poignant tale of an abandoned house on the 101 Freeway as a symbol for the changing sensibilities of the often-reclusive nature of Southern California architecture.

Nick Adams, comedian and author of Making Friends with Black People, punctuates the night. His call to action implores “Allah, Xenu, The Beyonder, Oprah, or whoever it is who is that runs the universe” for “the basic level of public transport enjoyed by the residents of every other megacity in the first world!” Why is the City of Los Angeles subway system so sub-par? Attributing a quote to either I.F. Stone, Studs Terkel or H.L. Mencken, Adams best describes it as “what the F—?!”

The evening also included stimulating tales from Ken Bernstein, John Chase, Adrian Glick Kudler, Rico Gagliano, Brooke Hodge, Sam Lubell, Tom Marble, Chris Nichols, and Tibby Rothman. Like its sister (or more accurately mother) series, the KGB Reading Nights in New York, City Listening II proves its value once again to Los Angeles. These venues for the design community are important recourses to forwarding the cause of informing design, and the public, from coast to coast and beyond.

 deLaB City Listening, photo by Monica Orozco

by Mike Neal

posted in Events

tagged alissa walker, Christopher Hawthorne, City Listening, dwell on design, Frances Anderton, Joe Linton, KCRW's DnA, KGB Reading Night, LA River, marissa gluck, Monica Orozco, Nick Adams

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