Morphosis Architects
Architect Thom Mayne is a principal of Morphosis, an architectural firm in Santa Monica, California and the 2005 winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA and was a member of President Obama's Committee on Arts and the Humanities.
Thom Mayne's new Cheviot Hills house The Mayne house incorporates a design feature to honor the site's former resident, Ray Bradbury. It's a decorative metal panel in front of the house with cutout quotes from the author. Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury lived in the same house in Cheviot Hills for 50 years. A couple years ago, one of LA's most prominent architects, Thom Mayne and wife Blythe Alison Mayne, bulldozed it to build a new home. The couple promised a “very, very modest” house that would honor Bradbury in its design. Now that home is almost complete. Did they deliver? DnA got a preview of a residence that is a valentine to the “private rituals” of family life, a web of architectural tricks and influences, and a model for a resource-efficient anti-McMansion.
Taking care of LA County's housing needs with 1 percent of its land LA County alone has a population bigger than 42 states, yet housing hasn’t kept pace. Angelenos hardly agree on how to grow or whether to grow at all. The fight between sprawl and density is at the heart of ballot measures coming up in LA and Santa Monica. Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne has come up with a compromise of sorts. He says his plan will make room for 1.5 million more people, using just one percent of the county’s land.
A Taste of the Future at 'A New Sculpturalism' A New Sculpturalism will show models, sketches and photographs of buildings constructed by more than 30 of LA’s leading and lesser-known architects. But, knowing that architecture is best experienced at human scale, MOCA also commissioned walk-in pavilions designed by young architects -- Elena Manferdini, Georgina Hujlich and Marcelo Spina of the firm Patterns, and Tom Wiscombe. In addition they asked Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues of Ball-Nogues to create a custom gateway (as we air, their participation is still being negotiated.) DnA visited each of the designers in their studios to get a sense of what they are building, and got a taste of the digital design and materials research that might inform buildings of the future.
Drama in the Making of 'A New Sculpturalism' A couple years back, MOCA brought in a visiting curator, Christopher Mount, to create a show of LA architecture dating back 25 years. The Getty granted the museum almost 450,000 dollars and he developed a show that he called A New Sculpturalism. He brought in over 30 architects, including three he considered to be fathers of this “sculptural” approach – Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne and Eric Owen Moss. But the framing of the show upset several of the architects, among them Frank Gehry who pulled out of the show in spring, leading to a stalling of the show. After negotiations between the Getty, MOCA, Frank Gehry and some of the other architects, the show got back on track.
Thirty Years of Technological History Come to an End Just before 11:30 today East Coast Time, the voices of NASA were heard describing the launch of a Space Shuttle for the last time. As Atlantis took to the skies at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA marked the "sentimental journey into history." What did shuttle accomplished in 30 years? Was it a scientific success or a magnificent failure? We talk to one of the first women to work at NASA, who hoped to set foot on another planet. Is America's dream of space exploration out of date? Is it time to transfer the energy, imagination and resources into the problems we face here on Earth?
A Floating House for New Orleans When Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans four years ago, the Ninth Ward was virtually wiped away. Despite new dikes and levees, few people doubt there will be more flooding to come. Today a new kind of house was unveiled in the Ninth Ward as a hedge against an uncertain future. Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, known for buildings that are monumental in scale, has designed a house that can be mass produced, affordable. It also floats !
Changing the Face of Downtown Los Angeles The Cornfield is a 32-acre strip of open land bounded by North Broadway and North Spring Street in downtown LA between Chinatown and the Los Angeles River. It's across the 101 Freeway from Elysian Park. It never was really a cornfield at all, but when it was a railroad yard, cornstalks sprouted from seeds that spilled from boxcars. After the railroads moved out, there were protests against turning it into an industrial site, and the state parks department bought the property five years ago. It's now an " interim park ," with an amphitheater and four acres of open turf, awaiting the results of an international design competition . Tomorrow, State Parks Director Ruth Coleman will announce which of three landscape architectural competitors will be asked to draw final plans for a new state park.
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."
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?
The Other Man Stories of two men who meet by chance and emerge indelibly changed – or at least, one of them does.
'Dandelion and Quince,' food and crime, 'All About Eggs' Sarah Lohman talks about the murder and historic recipes that form the backbone of her new book, “Ohio 1910,” and Rachel Khong shares highlights from Lucky Peach’s last cookbook, “All About Eggs.” Michelle Mckenzie tells us how to cook oft-forgotten fruits, veggies and herbs, and Jonathan Gold reviews AR Cucina in Culver City. Plus: raspberries at the market and a special guest DJ set from Alton Brown.