Hello! April is a full month but here are three events I'm involved with that I hope you can fit into your busy schedule (an AIA/LA conversation about housing, Seeding The City, LA Times Festival of Books). Note: To stay connected on "Design Things to Do" in LA generally, please subscribe to this newsletter I'm writing for KCRW; click here to find back issues.
Seeding The City: Nature's Story
Earth Day, Saturday April 22, 12:00 - 8:00pm
There is a lot going on this Earth Day, Saturday, April 22, but I hope you will have time to join me at Helms Bakery District, for Seeding The City: Nature's Story, a packed afternoon and early evening of installations and pop-ups and visualizations intended to evoke the flora and fauna that are increasingly absent from our lives.
Some great talents will be there, including Sean Knibb, gifted landscape and interior designer (Line Hotel, Treehouse), whose latest project, with his team at Flowerboy Project, is these amazing Digital Flowers (see above). They are especially gorgeous in the dark, so at sunset we will blow them up large, and host a reception and talk between Sean and James Vincent, former CEO of Apple's Media Arts Lab, about fusing the natural and the digital.
During the pandemic the landscape architect, Takako Tajima, create enchanting “fairy gardens" for her children (see top of page). At Seeding The City, she will show children and the young at heart how to make their own. Alexander Vidal, illustrator/writer of Wilds of the United States, will share his skill at drawing animals and the wilderness; Teena Appeles and Andrea Richards of Narrated Objects will work with kids on making nature notebooks, and Leslie Roberts and Anne LaForti will give a presentation on how to extract colors from soil and plants.
That’s just for starters! Get all the attractions here.
See You at the LA Times Festival of Books!
Saturday, April 22/Sunday, April 23 (Book Talk, April 23, 12 pm)
It's time for the Literati's favorite weekend of the year: the LA Times Festival of Books, taking place at USC on the weekend of April 22 and 23. I’ll be there all-day on Sunday, April 23, at the Angel City Press booth, where I’ll be signing copies of Common Ground: Multifamily Housing in Los Angeles (recently shortlisted for this indie book award).
At noon on Sunday I will head over to Wallis Annenberg Hall and join Ken Bernstein, author of Preserving Los Angeles: How Historic Places Can Transform America's Cities and Liz Falletta, author of By-Right, By-Design Housing Development versus Housing Design in Los Angeles for a conversation with housng scholar and planner Todd Gish about “Confronting L.A.’s Housing Crisis,” while drawing from L.A.'s underappreciated multifamily residential legacy.
Click here for details.
Housing That Works for the Residents and the Neighborhood
Thursday, April 13, 5pm
The speakers are: Lorcan O’Herlihy (LOHA), Brian Lane (Koning Eizenberg Architecture), Lise Bornstein (KFA Architecture), Chris Torres (Agency Artifact), David Christensen (RELM), Aaron van Schaik (SuperLA®), Clayton Taylor (West of West).
Click here for details.
