Producer, DnA: Design and Architecture
KCRW news producer and producer of DnA: Design and Architecture
PROFILE
Avishay Artsy
Kcrw Staff/Producer
FROM Avishay Artsy
Design and Architecture
A new home for LA’s new soccer team The new $350 million dollar arena of the Los Angeles Football Club sounds huge - 22,000 seats – but its owners say it will feel intimate. The Banc of California Stadium has the steepest seating bowl in Major League Soccer, at 34 degrees, and features shops, restaurants, and an events center.
Design and Architecture
SCI-Arc in Mexico City, Identity in Design President Trump may diss Mexico but designers and architects are flocking there. Now SCI-Arc has set up a satellite school in the capital and LA is learning from Mexico City. And, the buzz is starting for “Crazy Rich Asians.” Nelson Coates talks about the “unbelievable unabashed joy” of working as production designer on the movie and the role of identity in design below the line.
Design and Architecture
The density bill is dead. What's next for housing? A controversial bill that would have led to more high-density housing in California died in a legislative committee this week. Why did SB 827 fail, and what’s next in the fight to build new housing?
Design and Architecture
Will SB 827 smash local control?, Boyle Heights artists A proposed state law could radically change California’s residential neighborhoods. Supporters hope the bill will create much-needed housing in the state’s growing cities. Critics say it will ruin their communities. And, Boyle Heights art galleries have been the target of an anti-gentrification campaign by artist-activists. One gallery owner offers to shut down to symbolically “acknowledge their practice.”
Design and Architecture
The challenge of building new housing in density-resistant Los Angeles A has a massive housing problem. There are a number of initiatives to resolve the homeless crisis and the creation of more affordable housing. But, do any of these solve the basic problem in LA, which is resistance to the construction of new housing?
Design and Architecture
Fifty years later, CalArts revisits ‘House of Dust’ Back in the purer, simpler days of computer science, an artist named Alison Knowles teamed up with an electronic composer named James Tenney and together they created an early example of a computer-generated poem. Both were based in New York and part of the experimental art movement in the 1960s and 70s called Fluxus. The poem was created in 1967 with a Siemens System 4004 computer, using a programming language called Fortran. They gave a programmer at Brooklyn Polytechnic lists of four qualities that could be assigned to a house: material, location, lighting source, and inhabitants. The program randomly assembled them into thousands of permutations in a long series of quatrains, that a dot-matrix printer then printed on perforated tractor-feed green and white lined paper. That poem inspired a house -- taken from one quatrain from this poem: A HOUSE OF DUST ON OPEN GROUND LIT BY NATURAL LIGHT INHABITED BY FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Knowles worked with an architect named William Breger to interpret these spare phrases. The house was made of fiberglass, covered with a thin layer of plaster. It consisted of two curving, bulbous shapes with tiny entrances you had to crawl to enter. It was briefly installed on the lawn of a housing co-op in Chelsea. Then, when Knowles was asked to join the faculty of the newly formed Calarts, she insisted the House of Dust come with her. Fifty years later, CalArts students have recreated the project, as House of Glass, inspired by a different stanza of the original poem. DnA producer Avishay Artsy talks with CalArts critical studies professor Janet Sarbanes and Art By Translation’s Sébastien Pluot about the origins of the House of Dust, how it was emblematic of the school’s radical educational approach and “an exercise in architectural rebellion,” and why the new iteration is “a backward looking project, but it's also very much a forward looking project, but it's also mostly about activating the present.” Alison Knowles, House of Dust, 1967-70. Installation, mixed media. Image courtesy of Alison Knowles.
Design and Architecture
Zuckerberg Testifies, House of Dust, Bombay Beach Biennale Facebook has tweaked its design to give users clearer control over their information. Can these changes help the social media giant become “friends” again with its users? The Bombay Beach Biennale has come to the Salton Sea. How do the locals feel about the influx of art and opera? And CalArts marks the 50th anniversary of the “House of Dust,” a house inspired by a computer-generated poem.
Design and Architecture
Driverless Cars, LA’s Chief Design Officer California is beginning to allow the testing of self-driving cars with no humans at the wheel. Critics say the technology is not ready for the roads, but supporters say autonomous vehicles will make streets safer. And Christopher Hawthorne is leaving his post as the Los Angeles Times’ architecture critic to take up a new job as the city of LA's first-ever Chief Design Officer. What does that job entail exactly?
Design and Architecture
Self-driving cars move forward, with roadblocks As Uber investigates last week’s fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona involving a self-driving car, the company has decided to pull its application to test self-driving cars on California streets. What does this mean for California's plans to continue testing autonomous vehicles?
Design and Architecture
Bridges and Walls: The Fourth Border The final episode of DnA’s Bridges and Walls examines the “4th Border,” the Southland’s seashore. Undersea cables are being laid to connect LA virtually to the Pacific Rim and the rest of the world. But why do so many land in Hermosa Beach? What are we giving away in return for these connections? And how about using the ocean as an alternate route for traffic-weary Angeleno commuters? We'll find out what it would take to ferry passengers between the beach towns.
Design and Architecture
Fixing Westside traffic with a ferry service Traffic is so awful that dreaming up alternative transit routes is now an LA pastime. And for those sitting on the 405 or PCH, one idea that is being floated -- excuse the pun -- is the idea of ocean-based transit.
Design and Architecture
Bridges and Walls: The Future of Freeways Los Angeles has fallen out of love with freeways. Or has it? Freeways were once liberating bridges between communities. Now they are polluting, rush-hour parking lots that form walls within LA. DnA looks at the health impact of living near freeways, a proposed new freeway in the High Desert and what freeways might look like in the future.
Design and Architecture
Lucas Museum lifts off in Expo Park Construction broke ground today on the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. The museum is located in LA’s Exposition Park, and will house the art collection of "Star Wars" creator George Lucas. It’s a big arrival for the neighborhood, and it comes in the form of what looks like a giant silver spaceship -- with gardens.
Design and Architecture
Bridges and Walls: Invisible Walls There are walls that impact the communities they contain, but are naked to the eye. On today’s “Bridges and Walls” episode we explore three examples of invisible walls: the boundaries that mark gang territories; zoning codes that divide communities; and the West LA eruv, a ritualistic fence that allows Orthodox Jews to perform certain tasks on Shabbat, the traditional day of rest.
Design and Architecture
Visual design in this year's Oscar nominees It’s the Oscars this weekend, and most of the buzz is about the acting honors and the horse race for best picture. But there’s a whole community in LA that will be watching for winners in the below-the-line categories whose creative talents do not typically become household names. That includes sound, editing, and the production and set design that can make or break a movie.
Design and Architecture
Bridges and Walls: LA River, part 1 Eighty years ago this week, rain poured down on Los Angeles. Floods washed out roads, bridges and thousands of homes. The devastation led to total channelization that would forever shape -- and divide -- Los Angeles. Now efforts are underway to build new bridges, bring back wildlife and forge new connections at the LA River. But with those efforts come anxiety about change.
Recommended
Bookworm
Claudio Magris: Blameless In Claudio Magris' Blameless, a museum of the implements of war and destruction is created to inspire peace. But this conversation is not just about war and peace.
Design and Architecture
Farewell LA freeways, Peter Shire is back Angelenos don't want more freeways but we seem not to want mass transit either. Metro has killed the 710 freeway extension, and bus and train ridership is down across the region. What's the future of getting around in LA? And, Peter Shire is having a comeback. What attracts a new generation to his playful ceramics and furniture?
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
Previewing James Comey's blockbuster testimony Former FBI director James Comey testifies Thursday in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, but his opening statement has been released. In it, he says he felt pressured by Donald Trump to declare loyalty to him and publicly clear him of any wrongdoing in the Russia investigation.
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
Accusations of lying fly between James Comey and White House During his testimony Thursday, former FBI Director James Comey accused President Trump and other White House officials of lying when they said the FBI was in disarray and its staff had lost confidence in him. President Trump’s lawyer said Comey was wrong -- that the president never asked for his loyalty, and never asked him to back off the investigation into former NSA director Michael Flynn.