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On DnA last October we heard from graphic designer/street artist Shepard Fairey about the creation of his now ubiquitous Hope poster in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Now other designers are encouraged to submit designs for political artworks that'll be judged by Fairey, as well as Spike Lee, Eric Hilton of the Thievery Corporation and others, and shown during the inauguration at MANIFEST HOPE:DC's Inauguration Art Gallery.

Like many people, I grew up making things. My mother taught my sisters and I to sew, to knit, to work with clay and make candles and craft things with cut paper. We made our own clothes and gifts and cards. It was fun but also necessary because that was in the days before globalization and the explosion of cheap consumer products. 

Since then making and buying handmade clothes and accessories has become a luxury because it's so time-consuming; it has, paradoxically, become more cost-effective to simply buy stuff shipped from overseas. But it's also triggered a backlash, with more and more people drawn to making and/or buying handmade product. This is at happening in the realm of Modern design at companies like Artecnica and Dosa, where you'll find contemporary craft resulting from the collaboration between top designers and artisans, who are often located in poorer countries. 

We've seen the growth in modern handicraft, evidenced by the thousands attending craft fairs like LA's Felt Club. And we are seeing the desire for hand-hewn raw materials, like clay and wood. There's a palpable desire for the authentic, the natural, even as the handmade industry is being enabled by the internet. We'll talk about all this on today's DnA, with Jenny Ryan, founder of Felt Club; Catherine Bailey, creative director of Heath Ceramics, now opened in LA; William Stranger, furniture-maker whose wood work is currently on show at the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art; and Brooke Hodge, Curator of Architecture and Design at MOCA.

The boom in handmade has occurred while the economy was going well, but now there's a new imperative to do-it-yourself, which is the downturn in the economy. So we'll talk next about add a dash of style to a holiday party, on little more than your imagination. My guests are the interior designers Ron Woodson and Jaime Rummerfield,  principals of Woodson and Rummerfield's House of Design, and authors of High Style, a new book about some of the glam interiors they've designed and the parties held there. Their typical client is affluent, but for DnA, they've focused on how to glam up your home on next to nothing. 

And last but not least, the multi-talented Alissa Walker, DnA's own associate producer, prodigious design writer, and most recently, co-organizer of the GOOD December program of salons, panel discussions and more. At one of those events I witnessed Alissa deliver a wonderful spoken word about designers facing the downtown in LA and, realizing we had a bard in our midst, asked her to turn her talents to DnA. So she sees out the year with look back at DnA, set to a techno beat by DnA's audio whizz and co-producer, Ray Guarna. Here is is, word for word:

Tis the season at Design and Architecture when we stop to cheer

All the stories that put the D and the A in our year.

From the Bird’s Nest to the Broad Stage, there were structures so thrilling

Tom La Bonge couldn’t choose one, but picked five favorite buildings!

 

It was a year for design activism as creatives got critical,

Robbie Conal and Shepard Fairey were kings of the posters political.

Guerrilla gardeners hit the streets, armed with seed bombs

And Fritz Haeg took a sickle to the country’s front lawns.

 

Cutting-edge technology blew our elastic minds,

From cinematic effects to Greg Lynn’s blob-tastic designs.

Good design brought us smart cars and bikes with hot wheels

But bad restaurant acoustics still drowned out our meals!

 

The Gamble House turned 100, its Craftsman eaves standing tall,

Disneyland’s it’s a small world made big changes, after all.

Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House went up for millions at auction,

For the rest of us, Charles and Ray Eames stamps were still pretty awesome.

 

Welton Becket was celebrated as the Mark Taper was retread,

BCAM came to town wearing its bright Renzo Red,

Today we praised the handmade with stuffed owls and Heath Ceramics…

But what’s this about a downturn? Now designers, don’t panic:

 

We told you that Obama once wanted to be an architect

And we think that gives design its very own president-elect

So here’s to the future and a great holiday,

From Frances, Ray, Alissa and all of us at DnA!

I hope you like the show, and wish you very Happy Holidays for 2008 and look forward to sharing more DnA with you in 2009.

DnA's scheduled show for Dec 16 has been moved to next Tuesday, Dec 23. That's to make way for a Politics of Culture, hosted by Ruth Seymour, on the future of MOCA. Dec 16 is the day the board meets to discuss how to get out of its financial hole and determine the museum's future. By the time Tuesday’s POC airs, we should know what MOCA’s fate will be. Ruth will bring you the latest news and discuss the decision with philanthropist Eli Broad, City Council President Eric Garcetti (ex officio member of the MOCA board) and former board member and noted collector, Dean Valentine.

But don't miss DnA next week, for an in-depth look at the handmade design movement, with Catherine Bailey, Owner of Heath Ceramics, now newly opened in LA; Jenny Ryan, founder of Felt Club, furniture-maker William Stranger, whose custom works are currently on show at PMCA; and MOCA Arch and Design Curator Brooke Hodge. Also, Sam Lubell (see previous post) will discuss his Favorite Building in Second Life, and "High Style" authors, and decorators Ron Woodson and Jaime Rummerfield will tell you how to design a holiday party on nothing but your imagination.

 

London, where I spent my college years, has long been a buzzing center of art and design that has generated plenty of interesting architectural ideas (Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and many other architectural luminaries were schooled there) but little exciting new architecture – thanks to want of space, limited opportunities for young architects and tyrannical design review. Most notable new buildings in the last 30 years seemed to be high tech: exquisitely engineered but often rather soulless, transparent glass and lacey steel structures. Well, all that’s changed, according to LA’s own Sam Lubell, California editor of the Architects Newspaper and author of the new book, London 2000+. He has sought out a diverse array of new buildings, among them office towers in the high-tech tradition by the likes of Norman Foster but also art-inspired statements like the Rivington Place visual arts complex by younger talents like David Adjaye (heard on last month’s DnA on Obama’s victory and what it could mean for cities). Lubell will be talking about his findings and signing books tonight at the new LA Forum HQ at 6520 Hollywood Boulevard (just East of LACE).

 

DESIGN SCRIBES UNITE

Lubell is a member of the small club of Angelenos, including yours truly, who write about design and architecture in LA; and almost that entire membership gathered this past Monday at GOOD magazine’s new HQ on Melrose to read from their own works (organized by de LaB, "design east of La Brea"). If audience appreciation had been quantified by a laughometer, the stars of the evening were the Curbed LA duo of Marissa Gluck and Josh Williams on “hideous” homes for sale, which snarkily mocked other people's taste; the City of Weho’s urban designer John Chase on a very strange personal encounter, and a quite brilliant rap about LA’s recession-hit design world by the de LaB event’s organizer Alissa Walker (also DnA’s own associate producer). Some of us will be back at GOOD next Thursday, December 18, to go one better on observing LA; rather we’ll be offering up ideas for how to improve it!  

 

 

So how’s this for cross-promotion? LA architect Thom Mayne – he of Caltrans, the fab Pomona Diamond Ranch High School and many a global landmark – recently shared his musical influences with KCRW’s own Tom Schnabel.  As you can see from Thom's big beam, he clearly got a big kick out of talking music, supporting a theory I have that the so-called “rock star architects,” of which Mayne is now one, are in fact emulating, through architecture, the real rock stars of their youth. Why do I think this? Well, last time I saw Thom he raved about Shine The Light, the movie by Martin Scorcese about the Rolling Stones tour. It was evident that Mayne worshipped Mick Jagger. Soon afterwards, I ran into Wolf Prix, a fellow “rock star architect” who, like Thom, came of age in the age of rock stars, the 1960s; and he went on about his passion for Keith Richards. And what defines the architecture like that’s produced by this club of rock star architects (also including fellow boomers Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Jean Nouvel, Herzog and de Meuron and the slightly younger Zaha Hadid)? It's flamboyant, spectacular, iconoclastic. . . in sum, the architectural equivalent of a rock concert. I’m going to talk more about this, and how the "rock star" architects differ from the more serious younger generation, on an upcoming show, but in the meantime, go check out Thom and Tom.

 

 

Santa Monica’s famous McCabe’s Guitar Shop has served three generations of musicians and music lovers through its retail store, music school and concerts, and KCRW will celebrate its contribution on Thanksgiving Day. But did you know that the story has a design dimension; the store’s namesake is the very same Gerald McCabe, who was also tugboat restorer, race-car driver, yoga instructor and furniture designer in the 1950's and 60's. McCabe made clean, spare furnishings that were characterized by precision joinery and such techniques as flame-cut metal, a skill learned while working in the shipbuilding industry during the war.

 

From 9:00AM – 12:00 Wednesday, join Lincoln Myerson, the fifth and current concert producer for McCabe’s, as he hosts a three-hour McCabe’s retrospective, featuring a history of this hallowed concert space through conversations with and exclusive live performances from the McCabe’s stage by some of the musicians who’ve graced it over the decades. A KCRW Music Special.

Check out KCRW.com/mccabes for a playlist, slideshow, timeline, links to music by participating artists and an update on McCabe’s today.  

Hot off our DnA show Tuesday, when we talked about Obama, his big city experience and what he might do for architecture and urban policy, come reports that his pick for Commerce Secretary is Penny Pritzker, she of the powerful Chicago family that awards the annual Pritzker Prize. In addition to chairing a number of corporations including and the Pritzker Realty Group, Penny Pritzker lists as her interests: fitness and family, improving the lives of young people, and "the arts and architecture." While I have some reservations about the Pritzker Prize and its role in the "starchitecture" culture of the last couple decades, there's no doubt that it has helped raise public awareness of innovative architecture. And, if she is the nominee (other reports say she is denying she is a contender), while Obama would doubtless have picked her for her business savvy (she was his national finance chairman for the campaign), she could whisper in his ear about the importance of good design as part of urban policy. Note that past Pritzker prize-winners are LA's own Thom Mayne of Morphosis and Frank Gehry .

President-elect Barack Obama is the first US leader in a long time to hale from a large metropolis, specifically Chicago, where he's witnessed not only urban challenges equal to any in the US, but also a rich and proud architecture culture. What does mean for architecture and design? That's theme of today's DnA. featuring Ghanaian-Brit architect David Adjaye, historian Kevin Starr, and Krista Kline of the LA Mayor's office. In terms of street fashion, I think his debonair urbanity portends a change in style; and in terms of urban policy and design, his empathy could portend an enlightened approach, even involving "new, new deal" investment in energy and infrastructure. Starr talks about FDR's original New Deal, which celebates its 75th anniversary this year. See post below for more on New Deal graphics.

Also, you may have heard bad reviews about Quantum of Solace but the latest Bond flick gets an A+ for architecture. Hear why from Steve Rose at London's Guardian.

And it's a grim day for GM, currently in DC begging for a bailout, and refraining from debuting any new cars at the Los Angeles auto show that opens to press tomorrow. We chose to talk with Chris Mount about the LA contribution to auto design, taking place under our noses at the styling studios here.