This Week on DnA: Tesla Drops Patents, Miracle Mile Makeover, Coolhaus Loves Architecture

Elon Musk continues to disrupt industry with his latest patent move, and changes are headed to Miracle Mile with three museum makeovers; plus, we talk about Coolhaus’s architectural ice cream.

Tesla Tosses its Patents

The message from Silicon Valley is that patents are worth protecting, hoarding and fighting about in court.

So what are we to conclude from Elon Musk’s announcement last week that the “wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters” has been removed?

Was this a provocative Musk marketing stunt designed to ratchet up desire for his products? Or an industry-disrupting act of altruism that lets other car companies build on the electric-power technology Tesla has pioneered?

“Mobility” expert Dan Sturges and CARLAB president and Art Center professor Eric Noble offer their thoughts.

Miracle Mile Gets a Curvaceous Makeover

Meanwhile, changes are coming to Miracle Mile. Last month the LA architect Zoltan Pali was recently dropped from the design team for the museum for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, reportedly over differences over the design for an attached auditorium in a “spaceship” designed by co-architect Renzo Piano.

And that’s not the only upheaval on Museum Row. “Neverbuilt’s” Sam Lubell walks us through the changes underway at the former May Company building, LACMA and the movie museum and we learn that the future will be curvy (See images below.)

Coolhaus Makes Architecture Digestible

UCLA’s architecture and urban design students recently graduated with a day of presentations of projects that were the fruit of years of study. But will they all go on to build buildings? Not necessarily. But perhaps the least obvious application of an architecture degree is. . . making ice-cream.

That’s what UCLA grad Natasha Case decided to do when she and former homebuilder Freya Estreller created a business called Coolhaus selling organic ice-cream and cookie sandwiches with punning names like Frank Behry, Eric Owen Mosscarpone, CaraMia Lehrer, and Buck-mint-ster Fuller.

Natasha and Freya talk to DnA about delivering mini-architecture lessons via ice cream.

Changes Coming to Miracle Mile

Image above, rendering looking southeast at the proposed museum for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; shown, architect Renzo Piano proposes to connect an auditorium in a “spaceship” to the former May Company building which occupies the northeast corner of the Fairfax-Wilshire intersection. Image, below, photo of the former May Company building, looking north and northeast.

Image above, rendering showing view east of the proposed “wrapping” of the Petersen Automotive Museum designed to evoke speed by architect Eugene Kohn of Kohn Pedersen Fox; image below, photo looking east of the Petersen Automotive Museum, located on the Southeast corner of the Fairfax-Wilshire intersection in a former department story designed by Welton Becket.

Image above, photo looking Northwest of model of architect Peter Zumthor’s proposed “inkblot” of a building intended to take the place of LACMA’s Art of The Americas building and all the buildings originally designed by William Pereira; image below, photo looking Northeast of LACMA.

Images collaged by Sean Habibi.