We hear it from the owners of A. Quincy Jones houses all the time: "The house just feels good."

In organizing and designing "A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living," the new exhibition on one of L.A.'s beloved residential architects, the Hammer Museum wanted to convey that idea -- how Jones was a master at shaping space, turning architecture into an experience and making a space "just feel good." But how? How to convince museum-goers when you can't move a house into the Hammer?

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, the guest curator behind the show, offers a hint at the partial answer in this video...

When the group Yarn Bombing Los Angeles extended an open call for granny squares in November, the group was hoping to collect enough of the traditional crocheted pieces to cover the facade of the Craft and Folk Art Museum. 

After The Times reported on the plans and word spread, the collective was bombarded with an astonishing 15,000 granny squares from 50 states and 25 countries.

"We couldn't be more surprised or happy with the outcome," said the project's organizer, Arzu Arda Kosar.

Now that the squares have been installed, Kosar said the group is left with a surplus of squares. What to do...

New York Design Week and the 2013 ICFF -- the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, the nation's most important expo for modern home decor -- that wrapped up this week will be remembered more for its cheerful mood than cutting-edge designs.

Although designers continued to push boundaries with materials (recycled refrigerator plastic, thermo-formed Corian) and explore 3-D technology, the new looks were more about color, luxurious finishes (copper was king) and a sense of fun (look out, Jonathan Adler).

"Right now, people are more tempted to take a risk and buy something that makes them...

Los Angeles artist Ana Serrano creates vibrant neighborhoods filled with color and complexity, yet she produces them out of the most humble materials: corrugated cardboard, construction paper, glue and paint.

These worlds will be on view starting this week in "A Daydreamer's Street," an exhibit at the Vincent Price Art Museum in Monterey Park.

Inspired by real-life blocks around L.A., Serrano's cityscapes celebrate the vernacular structures that instantly feel familiar to most Angelenos: the hand-painted signage, the concrete block, the barbed wire fences.

PHOTO GALLERY: Ana Serrano show at...

Growing coffee isn’t hard. It’s the time-consuming extraction of the beans that defeats would-be backyard growers.

Every season when the coffee bushes hidden in the shade of the Wattles Farm community garden in Hollywood start to produce cherries, one of the gardeners volunteers for the process of peeling the shells, removing the fleshy pulp along with the interior parchment, and washing and air-drying the tiny beans within.

“They’re very enthusiastic in the beginning and are still enthusiastic at the end because the coffee is very good, but they swear they’ll...

For all the razzle-dazzle of costumes worn by Michael Douglas in his uncanny incarnation as Liberace in the HBO film “Behind the Candelabra” — the crystals! the sequins! the furs! — the revelation for design fans will be lavish sets that sparkle with late ’70s and early ’80s style.

It’s a look that, for better or for worse, is experiencing a revival among contemporary designers just in time for the movie’s premiere Sunday.

“There was a lot of glamour in the '70s that really has not been repeated since,” Los Angeles designer Kelly...

The Tyre House, designed by A. Quincy Jones in the 1950s and recently restored by the Silver Lake architecture firm Escher GuneWardena, is a dreamy testament to Los Angeles' age of cool. Step inside the house's expansive, all-white living area and an 11-foot-high ceiling angles gracefully down toward a white brick fireplace that floats toward one end. Sliding glass doors open to a courtyard and pool on one side, to a steep driveway that disappears from sight on the other. Cork floors and a white sofa effortlessly sweeping along the wall add to the sensation of visual harmony.

Created when the...

The Hammer Museum exhibition opening May 25, "A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living," redresses what curators consider a major omission in the history of Los Angeles Modernism.

Jones, they argue, had as much, if not more, influence on Southern California architecture before his death in 1979 than many contemporaries who have since become icons of the era. Curators say Jones, who collaborated for much of his career with Frederick Emmons and lectured at USC for nearly three decades, has gone mostly unrecognized beyond his reputation for designing opulent houses for the wealthy, such as...