Gloria Ohland

They Could Be Heroes

Gloria Ohland
School was almost over at the L.A. County High School for the Arts, but the buzz in the air all week was about more than the big Baz Luhrmann–worthy graduation spectacular the kids would soon be staging at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. That would be fun and all, but there......
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Saint of Density

Gloria Ohland
It’s a good time to live in the city. After decades of decline, people and investment are pouring back into urban neighborhoods all across the country, and even into L.A.’s long-forgotten downtown. People want urbanity and convenience, and they want lofts, live-work spaces, town homes — a high-rise room with......
Photo by Kevin Scanlon

Talking the Walk

Gloria Ohland
Longtime MASS-transit and pedestrian advocate Diego Cardoso is in charge of building the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s light rail into Boyle Heights and beyond, intended to revivify the Eastside neighborhood sliced and diced by four freeways in the name of urban renewal during the last half of the 20th century. As......
Photo by Kevin Scanlon

Growth Management

Gloria Ohland
Artist Lauren Bon focused attention on the potential of downtown’s new Cornfield state historic park last year with an act as brilliant as it was obvious: She planted the swath of empty, low-lying land with corn. The corn grew tall as the summer sun arched higher, and the field’s verdant,......

Designer Air

Gloria Ohland
Photo by Art Cueto, LandtransIt’s ironic that Los Angeles, a city that’s maligned as traffic-choked and strip-malled and pilloried as the poster city for smog and sprawl, is emerging as one of the country’s premier laboratories for sustainable planning and design. Under the pressures of growth, traffic, and shifting demographics,......

No Finer Place for Sure

Gloria Ohland
Photos by Kevin ScanlonThe much-anticipated renaissance of downtown L.A. is nowhere more evident than in the Fashion District. Ninety blocks big and encompassing landmark neo-Gothic and art deco skyscrapers as well as the Flower District, Gallery Row and part of the Produce District, the Fashion District has never suffered from......

Home Is Where the Concierge Is

Gloria Ohland
Photo by Heidi Winsor Hotel living has always seemed the pinnacle of urbanity and convenience. Room service. Beds made up every morning. A concierge and doorman just a phone call away. A high-rise view over the metropolis. A car waiting downstairs. But while a significant number of people still live......
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Matthew Bourne Does Hollywood

Gloria Ohland
Photos by Kevin ScanlonThank god Matthew Bourne has come along and juiced up dance again, making it watchable and relevant and worthy of both critical and popular acclaim. It is said that what the English choreographer has always wanted to do is a Hollywood musical, and Play Without Words, based......

Renaissance in the Barrio

Gloria Ohland
Photo by Julius Shulman "Public housing built in the ’40s now sits on prime urban real estate, once again attracting the attention of redevelopers, both public and private. In such places contradictions intertwine: abandonment and dreams, construction and demolition, utopia and dystopia. These immense places are themselves provisional, and the......
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Brave New Cityscape

Gloria Ohland
Illustrations courtesy of Moule& Polyzoides Architects andUrban Planners Who are the most important architects working in Los Angeles? Frank Gehry, of course, and Thom Mayne, whose Santa Monica– based Morphosis just won the design competition for New York City’s Olympic Village (an L.A. architect takes New York!), and whose Caltrans......