May 29, 2009
Los Angeles photographer Gary Leonard’s latest project and gallery show aren’t about his own photos. But they still carry Leonard’s wry approach to pop culture and his attempt to capture the city’s ever-changing zeitgeist. They are photos of old, humongous L.A. billboards. Dave Gardetta of Los Angeles magazine — which offers a gallery of images – tells the back story: “Leonard received a phone message. ‘This fellow said his office was throwing out a cabinet of Kodachrome slides documenting billboards of the ’50s and ’60s,’ says Leonard, ‘and did I want them?’ Leonard did, and from those anonymously shot photos he’s created an Read More
May 23, 2009
New York’s radical transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is stealing streets away from cars and returning them to bikes and pedestrians. Her latest near-overnight heist is the elimination of all car traffic on Broadway in Times Square to create a 58,000-square-foot plaza complete with green space and sidewalk cafes. The concept is not new. It has made cities in Europe and South America some of the most livable in the world. New York magazine’s profile of Sadik-Khan gets into the details, including the enemies she is making of cabbies, theater owners and the old-guard of transportation bureaucrats, whose mission is to keep car traffic moving. (Good luck trying something like this in L.A.)
May 22, 2009
California voters have resoundingly defeated budget propositions 1 A through E, ensuring crushing public debt and slashed services. City and County governments are also drowning in red ink. Private businesses will likely show weak profits this year. So what is the next best source of economic development in the Southern California?
The answer is, most likely, public / private partnerships on infrastructure. Friday, May 29, 2009, 7:30 a.m. – noon, Urban Land Institute Los Angeles District Council (ULI Los Angeles) will present At the Forefront of Infrastructure. It will explore how planners, developers, architects and contractors can leverage Federal Stimulus funds and County Measure R transportation funds into significant growth by Read More
May 19, 2009
As magazines become less profitable do they become more precious? The latest non-traditionally formatted periodicals are as much art object as publication. Freestyle is printed on ink but on circular pages, with each issue housed in a Frisbee. La Lata (Can in Spanish) has its contents sealed in a can… sometimes a paint can, sometimes a pop-top container, sometimes the kind that needs a can opener. La Mas Bella (The Most Beautiful) has published 30 editions, each one different: a man’s wallet full of stuff, a box of games, a bag of vinyl records, etc. T-Post sends its 2,500 subscribers a new T-shirt, each with a “true story” printed on the inside. Perhaps the most extravagant is Read More
May 15, 2009
As schools continue to face huge budget deficits, the House of Representatives yesterday passed a bill that offers some hope for education, students and the environment. The initiative passed by the House is “a multiyear school construction bill with the ambitious goals of producing hundreds of thousands of jobs, reducing energy consumption and creating healthier, cleaner environments for the nation’s schoolchildren.” Read More
May 15, 2009
Publishers of Interview magazine will soon launch – in the depths of the recession, no less – a magazine, Modern. The quarterly will be devoted to design, “from aesthetics to market conditions, emphasizing information important for any serious collector, as well as material appealing to any fan of design,” the publisher said. With an $8.00 cover price and an initial 50,000 circulation, Modern will be mailed to subscribers of Antiques and Art in America-in select regions, according to a report in Folio.
May 14, 2009
Not Venezuela. Norway. The country of severe playwright Henrik Ibsen and severe composer Edvard Grieg grew its economy by just under 3 percent last year, while the rest of world descended into chaos. The government enjoys a budget surplus of 11 percent and its ledger is entirely free of debt.
According to Landon Thomas Jr.’s New York Times article this week, “With a quirky contrariness as deeply etched in the national character as the fjords carved into its rugged landscape, Norway has thrived by going its own way. When others splurged, it saved. When others sought to limit the role of government, Norway strengthened its cradle-to-grave welfare state.”
May 13, 2009
Among the hot topics at this week’s Urban Land Institute “Developing Green” conference in Los Angeles was a forum on “Green Neighborhoods: A Cost-Benefit Analysis.” Far-sighted organizations along with developers grasp that real sustainable design involves regional and neighborhood design just as much as building design. The U.S. Green Building Council, for example, which already offers LEED ratings (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for buildings, is now unveiling the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system. It integrates the principles of smart growth, urbanism and green building into the first national system for neighborhood design. The project is a collaboration among U.S. Green Building Council, Congress for the New Urbanism and Natural Resources Defense Council. It will assign ratings to masterplans or other large-scale developments that are: close to town and city centers, have good transit access, are urban infill sites, are previously developed sites, or are adjacent to existing development.
Also participating was the Sustainable Sites Initiative. This group is establishing voluntary national guidelines and performance benchmarks for Read More
May 11, 2009
We’ll probably see this in Dwell magazine soon: Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffet has unveiled a line of sustainably designed prefab houses. Created by Berkshire subsidiary Clayton Homes, the i-house (saw that name coming) starts at under $75,000. Does not include land (or shipping). According to the Low Impact Living blog, Clayton Homes “is one of the largest manufactured housing companies in the world, having produced over 1.5 million units since 1934.” (Back then they were called trailers.)
Standard green features include: Well-insulated exterior walls; metal roof that Read More
May 6, 2009
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reports on more synergy between green energy and the federal economic stimulus plan. The group’s Switchboard columnist, Samir Succar, says $41 million will “advance the nation’s development and transmission of renewable energy on public lands” through the Department of the Interior. That includes future development and transmission of wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy and the creation of jobs associated with these projects. A blog contributor, however, complains that because of the “shovel-ready” requirements for stimulus funding, lots of money is being shoveled to unworthy projects.
