USC School of Architecture
Senior lecturer at the USC School of Architecture; producer of Iconic Wilshire Boulevard; longtime editor and reporter for Chicago Public Radio and NPR, including the host of Hello Beautiful, a radio show about architecture and urbanism that ended in 2008; former Annenberg Fellow at USC where he studied the specialized journalism of architecture
LACMA by Zumthor: An 'Inkblot' on the Landscape If you head West on that ride, the endpoint will be the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which right now is itself the subject of a PSTP exhibit, " The Presence of the Past : Peter Zumthor Reconsiders LACMA." T he exhibit's restrained title masks the surprise you get on seeing the show. In addition to plans and models telling the story of the site, dating back to prehistory and the tar pits, the main event is towards the back of the Resnick Pavilion -- a huge dark gray concrete model of a dramatic new building being proposed for the site, by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, that has been described variously as an "inkblot," an "amoeba" and a "black flower." In the first of an ongoing look at this project, architecture reporter Edward Lifson and LACMA director Michael Govan give us a brief history of the site and how the new building would remake this part of Wilshire.
Lynell George on Wilshire Boulevard In the fourth "Iconic Wilshire Boulevard" story for cicLAvia and Pacific Time Standard Presents: Modern Architecture in LA, Lynell George talks to producer Edward Lifson about the dreams and disillusionment embodied in Wilshire Boulevard. As a writer, she equates the strip to a sentence or a river of words, "a great unscrolling street;" as a daughter, she associates Wilshire with a painful reminder of racism, experienced by her mother on arriving in Los Angeles full of high hopes. (Special thanks to Rima Snyder for assistance with audio production.)
Is LACMA Ready for the World Stage? Even before becoming director of the LA County Museum of Art seven years ago, Michael Govan was talking with Swiss architect Peter Zumthor . The subject was a re-creation of LACMA , and the conversation is still going on. The goal is to elevate Los Angeles to become a center of art in the same league as Paris, Rome, Athens and —especially — New York. In June, LACMA will open an exhibition to showcase Zumthor's design. In the meantime, Goven is building interest by talking about it in various forums.
Wilshire Boulevard PSTP has sponsored another exploration of a defining Los Angeles boulevard, but it's one you'll be able to take in outside of the museum space, and not at the speed or kind of mobility it was built for. We are talking Wilshire Boulevard and on June 23, bikers and walkers are invited to join in CicLAvia: Modern Architecture on Wilshire Boulevard . Part of the project is an accompanying series of stories, about Wilshire's iconic buildings, produced by veteran radio producer and architecture writer Edward Lifson. We are airing some of them on DnA, starting today with "Tar Pit Death Trip," told by memoirist D.J. Waldie, set against original music by Steve Wight. Waldie takes us back to the primordial ooze of LACMA's tarpits , a reminder that despite Angelenos conviction to the contrary, death is not an option and we will be one day replaced by new generations who will have stories to tell about us.
Securing Public Spaces, Super Wealthy Asians Vehicles are increasingly being used as weapons, as seen in the London Bridge attack over the weekend and in New York’s Times Square last month. The Compton-based company Calpipe is designing security bollards to help make public spaces safer. And novelist Kevin Kwan satirizes the “crazy rich” Asian jet set and their luxurious tastes in his latest book, “Rich People Problems.”
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?
Why did Jared Kushner want a back channel with Russians? News broke Friday that President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, tried setting up a back channel between the Trump transition team and the Russian government. What are the consequences for Kushner, President Trump, and the investigation into Russian meddling?
In 'Speechless,' Scott Silveri combines comedy, family & disability Scott Silveri has written and produced sitcoms for more than 20 years. In all that time, he never encountered a TV family that looked anything like the one he grew up in -- with a mom, a dad...and a brother with cerebral palsy. He changed that with his show Speechless on ABC. Silveri tells us about looking to his own past for stories, and why he was determined to make a family comedy and not just a "disability show."