Doug White, “The Famous Merle’s Drive-in (Visalia),” ca. 1950. Southern California Edison Photographs and Negatives. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

In a reaction against the outdated revivalist architectural style of previous decades, young American architects during the early to mid-20th century sought a new aesthetic—one that would embody progressivism and forward-thinking. That movement: modernism. Its testing ground: sunny California, particularly the Los Angeles Basin, which became the laboratory locale of choice.

With the help of new companies, like Edison Electric, the city of Los Angeles had the infrastructure to rapidly expand while enlisting the modern movement as its defining style. As LA became America’s modern city, photography played a crucial role in disseminating new examples of the architecture and design aesthetic to the masses. Edison Electric enlisted photographers in the field to document every step of the way. These photogs took pictures of everything from restaurants and office interiors to the telephone poles on the street, amassing a large collection that exhaustively depicts LA’s maturation. Eventually, the collection grew into an archive called the Southern California Edison Archive of The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Now, for the first time ever, the nearly 70,000 photographs in the collection will become the basis for a new online exhibit entitled “Form and Landscape: Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Basin, 1940–1990.” The exhibition is part of a series of Getty initiatives celebrating California’s revered modern architectural heritage. Click through to read more!

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James Turrell
Rendering for Aten Reign, 2013
Daylight and LED light
Site-specific installation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
© James Turrell
Rendering: Andreas Tjeldflaat, 2012 © SRGF

On June 21st, one of three simultaneous James Turrell retrospectives will open at the Guggenheim in New York. Titled quite simply James Turrell, the exhibition will feature not only Turrell’s greatest hits, but also a new site-specific installation, “Aten Reign.” Using both natural and artificial light, “Aten Reign” brings light down from the museum’s oculus, filtering it through five LED-lit cones and allowing it into the depths of an artificial structure suspended in the atrium.

Like in most Turrell work, the installation hides its apparatus from view, allowing visitors to concentrate fully on the affect of the piece. Hidden symbolism abounds—not surprising for an installation named after an Egyptian sun god (worshipped during a brief period of monotheism in ancient Egypt) and opening on the summer solstice.

See more images of “Aten Reign,” as well as of other work by the legendary light artist, below.

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Figolu, 2005–11. Photo: Jerry L. Thompson/Courtesy of Storm King Art Center

We’re closer than we’ve ever been (and now we’re even closer!) to the SFMOMA expansion, which will break ground on May 29. The official last day to appreciate the Mario Botta building’s intactness is June 2, at the close of a four-day countdown celebration with free admission for everyone.

To kick off its series of off-site programming, which must carry SFMOMA (and the rest of us) through early 2016, the museum fittingly went with something monumental. Director Neal Benezra organized a retrospective of Mark di Suvero’s large-scale steel sculptures at Crissy Field, a former airfield on the waterfront near the city’s Marina district. The show doesn’t officially open until Wednesday, but joggers and pedestrians will be forgiven for noticing the eight enormous steel assemblages hulking over their usual dog-walking routes. Read more!

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Frank Gehry’s Monaco Urbanisation En Mer project model, 2007. Photo: Gehry Partners

Story by Zach Edelson

Architect Frank Gehry needs no introduction, though you may not have met his models. Well, luckily, between now and June 29, you can meet these beauties at Leslie Feely Fine Art in New York City. ”Frank Gehry: At Work” offers a unique opportunity to see this master builder’s craftsmanship and approach up close and personal. More after the jump!

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Image courtesy of LEGO

The Guinness World Record for “Longest Plastic Toy Train Track” goes to the 80 LEGO enthusiasts who gathered in a Danish gym. Construction of the track took about six hours, while it took four more hours for the train itself to travel the length of the track. What a suspense-filled event!

One can imagine a bunch of serious-minded adults wresting some of the 93,307 LEGO elements away from their children, with the resultant layout winding regularly like the Chartres labyrinth. Still, at 4000 meters (12,000 feet) long, it is a major accomplishment; the participants won’t have to indulge in that sitcom trope of going for “most Guinness World Record attempts.”

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If Renaissance architects like Filippo Brunelleschi had had lasers at their disposal instead of ink, they might have made entire 3D perspective environments out of light—perhaps something like Vanishing Point, a light installation by the London art collective United Visual Artists (UVA). On view at Olympus Photography Playground through the end of this month, the work uses the rules of perspective to create immersive architectural spaces defined by shooting beams of white light. Who needs a colonnaded Urbino when a few reams of black cloth and laser diodes can entertain us for hours on end?

Actually, we should probably be glad that Renaissance artists and draftsmen were stuck with ink wells and pencils, because a da Vinci tricked out with UVA’s setup might have been too distracted to get any work done on his flying machine. Man is the measure of all lasers! Photos after the jump.

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By Sabrina Wirth, a candidate for the M.S. Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices degree in Architecture at Columbia University’s GSAPP.

New Yorkers by definition are creative people; they’re also ambitious, and a little bit competitive. First, New York challenged Paris as the Center of the Art World at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Then during the 20th century, it surpassed London as the Center of the Financial World (though the UK capital has since caught up). And for the past decade, the Big Apple has been steadily competing with Silicon Valley for the Center of Innovation. But now New York is staking its claim for a new title: Center of Design. So, if you’re planning on spending a quiet time in the city this month, fuggedaboutit—New York is about to get very busy.

Bookended between the Frieze Art Fair and the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, the first annual NYCxDESIGN festival officially kicks off tomorrow (May 10), with hundreds of events celebrating architecture, art, fashion, and design taking place throughout the five boroughs through May 21. (Including the Architizer A+ Awards gala on May 16!) The celebration aims, as Speaker Christine C. Quinn announced last February, to “demonstrate that New York City is the design capital of the world.” The event is organized by the New York City Council along with NYC & Company and a 33-person Steering Committee made up of leaders within the local arts community.

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Photo © Mei Le

Dissatisfied English bulldog Frank Gehry has backed out of an architecture exhibition in Los Angeles that prominently featured his work. The show, “A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture From Southern California,” is supposed to open June 2 at Gehry’s own Geffen Contemporary gallery at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. But without the participation of its star player, the show might not go on.

As we noted in our preview, the exhibition focuses on the past 25 years of rule-bending architecture in LA. Guest curator Christopher Mount gathered work by Gehry, Thom Mayne, Barbara Bestor, Michael Maltzan, and Lorcan O’Herlihy, as well as younger practices, to celebrate LA’s war on rectilinearity and its architects’ innovation in all that curves, folds, and protrudes. Without Gehry’s participation, Mount must scramble to revamp the exhibition and, potentially, face cancelation or a change of venue. Read more!

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Edible architecture is all the rage—from cities made of gum and moldy bread. And now you can have your birthday cake and live in it too! For his latest exhibition, “Guns and Ecstasy,” mixed-media artist Scott Hove has constructed a labyrinthine mirrored cake room. The “Pentagonal Disco Infinity Chamber” only fits one person at a time, so visitors can dance under the disco ball without feeling too self-conscious.

“Guns and Ecstacy,” which opens May 2 at San Francisco’s Spoke Art, will also include Hove’s dozen or so devilishly delicious-looking assault weapons frosted and repurposed. And if you think the juxtaposition of guns and buttercream presented in a dance-party atmosphere is puzzling—well, that’s the point. Hove  constructed the chamber to offer a fantastical space where one doesn’t have to think about gun-violence, violations of freedom, or the heated debates about it all. It’s a pre-paranoia world, where the motto is “Make Cake, Not War.” Click through to see the rest of the photos!

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Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Oxley Woods Houses, Milton Keynes, Bucks, UK, 2007. Street view. Image © 2013 Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners LLP.

By Sabrina Wirth, a candidate for the M.S. Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices degree in Architecture at Columbia University’s GSAPP.

According to the most recent US Census data, this is the first time since before the 1950s that more people are moving into New York City than are moving out—bringing the estimated population to a record high of 8,336,697. Now that is high density. So it is only fitting that we should start directing our focus toward different housing models that accommodate the city’s changing need for space. (Mayor Bloomberg’s micro apartments, anyone?)

A new exhibition opening tonight at the Center for Architecture, and co-sponsored by the Institute for Public Architecture, provides a good starting point. “Low Rise High Density,” examines the history of a typology that sprung up 40 years ago, when the need for space and better living conditions led to alternatives to high-rise public housing. Read more.

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