Today on DnA

On today’s DnA, the design of spectacle. With two new high-profile clubs opening in LA — Drai’s Hollywood, atop the new W Hollywood, and Trousdale in Weho –DnA takes a look at the art of nightclub design. It’s one thing to get the lighting, the furnishings, the colors right, but how do you create that ineffable quality essential to any good club: the vibe? Victor Drai, owner of some very successful late night hangouts in Vegas, and SCI-Arc grad and co-principal of young hospitality design firm Christian Schulz offer up some perspectives. In the spirit of club life, I met Christian last week at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, before he took a late night design meeting met with clients and partners Adam Goldstein and Leslie Kale about some new haunts they are creating for the hotel. Images immediately below, top: Drai’s interior; middle: Hyde Lounge at Staples by Studio Collective; bottom: Adam Goldstein, Leslie Kale and Christian Schulz of Studio Collective.

Also on the show, big box retail has been a cornerstone of urban development over the last couple decades (due to being a source of sales tax, post Prop 13) but now many companies that filled the big boxes are going under. What does a city do with the empty space? One answer is, fill it with art. The City of Glendale is hiring an art consultant to “curate” its big boxes. We’ll hear all about it from the City of Glendale’s Alan Loomis and Emil Tatevosian, as well as Downtown Art Walk’s Bert Green. Could the former Circuit City in down Glendale be turned into a buzzing temporary art space, like the Manifest Equality pop-up show, see below, earlier this month in an old Big Lots story in Hollywood?

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And last on the show, but absolutely not least, it’s the LA reality we like to forget — that we too could be smacked by a massive earthquake like those that suffered by Chile andHaiti (note, we had a baby one just today). Are we ready? One prominent LA structural engineer, Nabih Youssef, talks about our strengths — and weaknesses — in an age when earth sciences, structural engineering and computer modelling have advanced to the point that new buildings can, hopefully, “ride the wave.” But what about the older ones?