Chistopher Hawthorne, Architecture Critic

June 30, 2005

DESIGN

Green, with a high gloss

What sort of image comes to mind when you hear the phrase "green architecture"?

Stunt climbers use buildings for their own causes

June 7, 2008

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

Stunt climbers use buildings for their own causes

Renzo Piano, the Italian architect who designed the New York Times tower on 8th Avenue at 40th Street in Manhattan, made a point of keeping the building transparent at ground level. His goal, he said before the building opened last summer, was to avoid the forbidding, fortress-like appearance that marks other post- 9/11 towers in Manhattan. He wanted the final product to look inviting.

A grand park plan? Not really

April 21, 2008

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

A grand park plan? Not really

When Mark Rios takes the microphone Tuesday evening at a public hearing inside Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, he'll be presenting two very different designs for the new civic park downtown. The first is what his Los Angeles firm, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, calls a "base" plan, for which the projected $56-million cost is already in hand -- paid by Related Cos. as part of its deal to develop a commercial project with Frank Gehry across Grand Avenue from Walt Disney Concert Hall. The second is an "enhanced" version showing what might be possible with an infusion of new funding.

At auction: architectural history

June 3, 2008

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

At auction: architectural history

As part of a high-powered campaign to promote Richard Neutra's 1946 Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, which it auctioned during its big evening sale of postwar and contemporary art two weeks ago, Christie's produced a glossy booklet on the house and its setting. Near the front was a quote from Neutra himself: "The desert is subject to an infinity of moods, some of them violent."

Huntington Art Gallery's grand plan

May 27, 2008

ARCHITECTURE REVIEW

Huntington Art Gallery's grand plan

From the start, the Beaux-Arts house in San Marino that Myron Hunt designed for Henry and Arabella Huntington was marked by a level of ambition far beyond the merely residential. The couple always envisioned it as much as a place to show off their growing fine art collection -- and frame their worldliness -- as rest their heads. Not long after moving in, in 1915, they began making plans to turn their estate over to the public after their deaths.

Architect Rafael Viñoly gets inventive for UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute

April 27, 2008

ARCHITECTURE REVIEW

Architect Rafael Viñoly gets inventive for UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute

UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute, or CNSI for short, is the first Los Angeles project by the New York-based architect Rafael Viñoly. It is something of a stealth building. Its broad, low façade, overlooking the Court of Sciences near the southern edge of the UCLA campus, has a modesty that borders on the bland.

Seeing stars — in the sky

September 10, 2006

ARCHITECTURE

Seeing stars — in the sky

Compared to other cities its size, Los Angeles has always been short on icons of public architecture; when one falls out of commission, as the Griffith Observatory did 4 1/2 years ago, we notice the absence all the more.

'Sketches of Frank Gehry'

May 19, 2006

MOVIE REVIEW

'Sketches of Frank Gehry'

Architecture is the slowest of the arts, by far: It often takes a full decade for a building to go from sketch to ribbon-cutting, a journey that can be pushed off course by zoning officials, fussy clients and the laws of gravity. But in "Sketches of Frank Gehry," director and first-time documentarian Sydney Pollack manages to make his own art form look like the sluggish one.

Their declarations of independence

August 12, 2005

ARCHITECTURE REVIEW

Their declarations of independence

The 1970s and 1980s were an odd, freewheeling and sometimes combative golden age for Los Angeles architecture. During those two decades, a handful of young designers, each trying do his own thing with as much stubborn independence as possible, managed to come together as a loose band of self-styled mavericks.

A glitch in the glitz

May 9, 2005

ARCHITECTURE REVIEW

A glitch in the glitz

You've probably heard by now that the Wynn Las Vegas is something of a rarity: a new hotel and casino on the Strip that doesn't have an architectural theme, the way the Venetian, the Paris, the Luxor and countless others do. But it turns out the Wynn does have a theme — just a very odd one:

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Surveillance video of officer-involved shooting on MacArthur Causeway. Courtesy ...

Surveillance video of officer-involved shooting on MacArthur Causeway. Courtesy of the Miami Herald