Thom Mayne, Frank Gehry and the Band of L.A. Architects Who Changed Everything

'Confederacy of Heretics' ahow at SCI-Arc re-examines the 1979 exhibits that introduced Los Angeles architecture to the nation

Comments (0) By Wendy Gilmartin Thursday, Mar 28 2013

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More importantly, back in L.A., the idea was taking root that a group of confident, scrappy, alternative design offices could inherently change the architecture of the city, by taking the little jobs nobody else wanted — renovated bungalows and garages, front walls and fences, designs for art exhibits and gallery spaces where pieces of exterior walls project out over alleys to enclose a volume of space for a great view, or where ceilings soared 25 feet for the hell of it.

These kinds of formal architectural moves are manifold in L.A. now, and while those 12 original architects and their firms aren't necessarily leading the way in innovation anymore — a few having grown supremely conventional themselves — their spirit is directly linked to an understanding of what design practice could look like in a city that lacked a strong architectural heritage the way Chicago or New York had. Their ideas about DIY architecture practice and formal experimentation really took off in academia with the deanships of Michael Rotondi (of Morphosis and RoTo Architects) and Moss at SCI-Arc.

PHOTO BY BY AVE PILDAS

Frederick Fisher, left, Robert Mangurian, Eric Owen Moss, Coy Howard, Craig Hodgetts, Thom Mayne and Frank Gehry at Venice Beach

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Sci-Arc Gallery

960 E. Third St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Category: Galleries

Region: Downtown

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That academic trajectory fostered the current success of firms like Ball-Nogues Studio, Oyler Wu Collaborative and FreelandBuck, to name a handful, which make spaces out of materials like twine, aluminum tubing, electrical conduit and plastic party streamers. Echoing the L.A. School, these young offices work in collaboration with artists on public art pieces, exhibition designs and publications, and they generally harvest alternative types of work and clients in L.A., for example producing temporary outdoor canopies for restaurants or helping large-scale installation artists with the more technical aspects of their pieces.

On June 15, a symposium related to "Confederacy of Heretics" will unpack some of these issues and their repercussions as they apply to the current batch of L.A.'s homegrown talent, represented by younger (and nonmale, nonwhite) architect panelists and speakers including Barbara Bestor, Annie Chu and Hernan Diaz Alonso.

"A Confederacy of Heretics' " opening reception is Friday, March 29, at 7 p.m. A discussion of the exhibit is set for Friday, April 5, at 7 p.m., and a symposium takes place Friday, June 14, 3-9 p.m., and Saturday, June 15, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. SCI-Arc Campus, 960 E. Third St., dwntwn.; sciarc.edu.