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Southern California Institute of Architecture

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Cultural studies professor David Bergman recently completed several urban planning studies, including a Downtown Overlay Plan for the City of Lancaster, a Land Use and Economic Plan for Saticoy, Los Angeles and a Film Studio Feasibility Plan for the City of Washington, D.C. He also contributed an opinion piece focusing on the LA River Master Plan, published by the LA Business Journal.

Design faculty Joe Day (M.Arch ‘94) published his research into the overlap between prison and museum design in his new book, Corrections and Collections: Architectures for Art and Crime, published by Routledge Press. Day also completed two Southern California residential projects, the C-Glass House in Marin and the 4/Way House in Topanga.

Graduate Programs Chair Hernan Diaz Alonso completed the design for the Center of Experience and Media for Boeing’s Seattle outpost, where construction is scheduled to start in April. Most recently, Diaz Alonso received several architectural awards including The Architectural Review’s Emerging Architecture Award 2014, and one of Architect Magazine’s 2014 P/A Citation Awards. He was also named Baumer Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University.

Design faculty Ramiro Diaz Granados (B.Arch ‘96) was commissioned to design a permanent installation for the Oregon State University’s Student Experience Center. He also recently exhibited his work in a group show at the Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art, Almost Anything Goes: Architecture & Inclusivity.

SCI-Arc Director of Academic Affairs Ming Fung and partner Craig Hodgetts received an AIA LA Next LA Award for Building Blocks, a modular classroom infrastructure designed for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Fung currently serves as President-Elect of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), and will assume the role of President of ACSA in July 2014.

Cultural Studies Coordinator Todd Gannon edited a new book published by the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. Gannon’s Et in Suburbia Ego: Jose Oubrerie’s Miller House gathers new commentary and interpretation by leading voices in contemporary architecture, alongside a wealth of newly commissioned photographs and never-before-published drawings and models from Oubrerie’s archive which documents the house at a level of detail not normally seen in architectural monographs.

Design faculty Marcelyn Gow participated in the Archilab group exhibition on view at the FRAC Center in Orleans, France from September 2013—March 2014. She also contributed written essays to architectural publications including Minutiae: In Thesis Now and Onramp #4, both published by SCI-Arc Press, the Archilab Exhibition Catalog published by the FRAC Center, and contributed to the In Taboos and Tatoos pamphlet series produced by UrbanOps in Los Angeles.

Design faculty Margaret Griffin and SCI-Arc Undergraduate Programs Chair John Enright received an AIA LA Award for the design of the St. Thomas Apostle School. Margaret Griffin was also awarded the John S. Bolles Fellowship from the AIA California Council, and received a certificate of appreciation from the AIA LA Board of Directors.

Design faculty Elena Manferdini recently exhibited her work in the Almost Anything Goes group exhibition exhibited at the Santa Barbara Museum of Modern Art and in the Erasmus Effect group show at the MAXXI in Rome, Italy. Manferdini was awarded the 2013 Educator’s Award by the AIA Los Angeles, and received the ACADIA Innovative Research Award of Excellence for her research contributions to digital design in architecture.

Cultural studies faculty Ilaria Mazzoleni published her research into biomimetic architecture in her new book, Architecture Follows Nature: Biomimetic Principles for Innovative Design, co-edited with evolutionary biologist Shauna Price.

SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss received a Progressive Architecture Citation Award from Architect magazine for his Albuquerque Rail Yards Master Plan to convert a 27.3-acre site just south of Downtown Albuquerque into a mixed-use development. Metropolis magazine featured Moss on the cover of its January 2014 “Game Changers” issue, highlighting Hayden Tract, the architect’s decades-long urban project in Culver City, west of downtown Los Angeles. 

Design faculty Anna Neimark and her practice First Office completed Paranormal Panorama, an installation for the screening of Cold Rehearsal, an experimental film by directors Constanze Rhum and Christine Lang screened at the MAK Center in Los Angeles from November 2013-March 2014. Niemark also exhibited work in the LA Forum’s Out There Doing It Series, and contributed the “mess, n.” essay to Onramp #4: Another Fine Mess, published by SCI-Arc Press, and the essay How to Domesticate a Mountain to Perspecta 46.

Design faculty Florencia Pita and Jackilin Hah Bloom were shortlisted for the MoMA P.S. 1 Young Architects Program, a high profile annual competition challenging emerging architects to design a temporary installation within the walls of the P.S. 1 courtyard. Pita also exhibited her work with FPmod in a solo show on view in the SCI-Arc Library. Curated by Joseph Rosa, the UMMA Table & Objects exhibition was previously installed at the University of Michigan Museum of Modern Art.

SCI-Arc design faculty John Southern‘s critical field survey, Wilshire Star Maps, was part of the Archizines exhibition on view at the University of Hong Kong/Shanghai Study Centre through March 9, 2014. The two-part, limited-run publication produced by Southern and his LA-based office, Urban Operations, presents the latent formal and programmatic potential of the otherwise unnoticed skyscrapers along Wilshire Boulevard.

Design faculty Peter Testa and Devyn Weiser completed the Carbon Beach House and Studio in Malibu, Calif., which represents the first instantiation of Testa/Weiser’s all composite Carbon Tape House prototype. They collaborated with Greg Lynn on his exhibition, Archeology of the Digital exhibited at the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal and at Yale University. Peter Testa’s essay Autonomous Translations, addressing representation in architecture and next generation digital interfaces appeared in the newly release book by SCI-Arc Press, Fabrication and Fabrication.

Applied Studies Coordinator Tom Wiscombe advanced into Stage II of the international competition for the Kinmen Port Terminal in Taiwan. Stage I competition finalists included Visual Studies Coordinator Andrew Zago.

Southern California Institute of Architecture

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The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) today announced it has acquired its campus located in the Arts District on the eastern edge of downtown Los Angeles. The sale agreement finalized on Thursday, April 21 between SCI-Arc and property seller Legendary Investors Group includes the approximately 90,000-sq. ft. original Santa Fe Freight Depot building, located on a 4.5-acre lot stretching along Santa Fe Avenue from 3rd to 4th Street—where the school is presently located.  

At 1,250 feet (381 m) in length, the unique freight depot building is so long, that if it were upended, it would be as tall as the Empire State Building.

“SCI-Arc has been a vagabond school for almost forty years,” said Director Eric Owen Moss. “We kept the game moving… SCI-Arc’s light. SCI-Arc’s quick. SCI-Arc’s dexterous. We are, and building or not, we’ll remain so. That’s how we’ll survive,” added Moss in a school-wide announcement.

The campus purchase is a significant goal realized for SCI-Arc, as the depot will be the school’s first permanent home in a 39-year history.  For downtown Los Angeles, the sale of the land and the Santa Fe Freight Depot building to SCI-Arc is a key moment in the economic stability of an underdeveloped area of the city—the eastern edge of downtown. By owning its campus, SCI-Arc becomes a permanent player with a significant stake and role in the long-term revitalization of the area—the third major redevelopment zone in downtown Los Angeles along with LA Live and Grand Avenue.

“The Trustees together with the leadership have worked hard to achieve this important milestone for the school,” said SCI-Arc Board of Trustees Chairman Jerry Neuman.  “This acquisition guarantees the stability of SCI-Arc without compromising its forward-thinking nature.”

SCI-Arc’s commitment to putting permanent roots and expanding in the emergent Cleantech Corridor will be a key driver in the renewal of the Eastside of Downtown. The scale of the property, and the purpose of the school, offer an advantage for rethinking a city for the 21st century, using the best and brightest minds to reinvent economically sound and culturally relevant urban solutions.

Founded in 1972 by a group of seven faculty members and approximately 40 students who left Cal Poly Pomona to create a “college without walls,” SCI-Arc has been a nomad school for almost 40 years, with previous locations in Santa Monica and Marina Del Rey.  Since SCI-Arc started renting the Santa Fe freight depot in 2001—transforming its concrete shell into a school—its students, faculty and staff have helped define and give shape to the local community, and encouraged others to activate and locate to this area on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles. During the past 10 years, SCI-Arc has taken root in the neighborhood, bringing hundreds of young people into the once-abandoned area. Today, with the campus purchase, the school becomes a permanent part of the educational and cultural evolution of LA’s Arts District.

Designed by architect Harrison Albright, the depot was originally built in 1907 as two parallel 1,250-foot long twin structures stretching along Santa Fe Avenue. Albright used reinforced concrete for its turn-of-the-century design of the depot—its second use in Los Angeles. In the early 1990s, the western depot was demolished, leaving only one of the pair standing.  The renovation of the remaining structure took about 9 months to complete between fall 2000 and summer 2001, and was designed by SCI-Arc alumnus and then faculty member Gary Paige of GPS Studio, in collaboration with SCI-Arc faculty, alumni and students. The first classes were held in the depot in September 2001.

Southern California Institute of Architecture

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The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) today announced it has received two major grants that will be used to create the SCI-Arc Digital Lecture Archive. This free web archive will contain more than 1,000 hours of key architectural and design lectures and symposia from 1974 to the present that will be accessible online, via phone applications, e-readers, and other new media channels. A transformative $200,000 grant from The Getty Foundation and a significant $70,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts—their largest award this year in the Design category—will be used by SCI-Arc to digitize, transcribe, curate and present lectures by some of the most important architects, designers, and theorists who have guest lectured at the school during the past four decades, to form one of the most complete architectural archival collections of its kind in the world.

“SCI-Arc’s lecture archive is unique and impressive,” said SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss. “Its contents illustrate how for 40 years the school has continued to assemble this record of the most outspoken avant-garde architects from around the world. The record of lectures is especially useful going forward, suggesting what might be coming next, and, reciprocally, going backward to test whether what was claimed by the speakers was subsequently delivered.”

The SCI-Arc Digital Lecture Archive will provide access to never before seen footage of some of the most influential leaders in architecture and design, including Frank O. Gehry, Zaha Hadid, David Hockney, Rem Koolhaas, John Lautner, Thom Mayne, Eric Owen Moss, Kazuyo Sejima, and many more.  Among those in the archive are 12 winners of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize—the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of architecture. Many of these architects and artists appear more than once, providing opportunities for analysis of their development over a long span of their careers. Documentation critical to understanding the architectural history and legacy of Southern California, and Los Angeles’ role as an incubator of innovation, is particularly strong in this collection.

Scheduled to be launched in 2012—coinciding with SCI-Arc’s 40th anniversary—the SCI-Arc Digital Lecture Archive will feature a sophisticated search engine that will allow access to both entire lectures as well as specific segments of each lecture, placing the school’s significant archive at one’s fingertips. Targeting a global audience of students, professionals, researchers, historians, and members of the general public with an interest in architecture and design, this online platform will provide deep, customized access to the archive, through sub-clips searchable by specific topic and speaker.

SCI-Arc’s lecture archive was started in 1974, when students began taping lectures by distinguished practitioners and scholars spanning the fields of architecture, urban design, city planning, and other arts-related environments. Now standard practice at educational and cultural institutions, videotaping lectures was uncommon in the mid-1970s. Lecturers responded to SCI-Arc’s culture of creative engagement, by speaking candidly about their work. In addition to featuring talks by some of the most radical architectural and design innovators of our time, the collection reflects SCI-Arc’s interdisciplinary approach by including lectures by major figures in other disciplines such as art (Chris Burden, David Hockney, Robert Irwin, Alexis Smith, Diana Thater, James Turrell), film (Godfrey Reggio), critical thinking (Reyner Banham, Beatriz Colomina,  Manuel Delanda, Jeffrey Kipnis, Sanford Kwinter) and graphic design (2×4, April Greiman, Michael Worthington).

SCI-Arc currently hosts a limited online collection consisting of more than 200 select lectures available at www.sciarc.edu/lectures.php.  

Southern California Institute of Architecture

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The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) today announced it has elected two new members to join its Board of Trustees: Ted Tanner, Executive Vice President, Real Estate Development for AEG Worldwide, and Russell Goings, a veteran LA-based investment banker and Senior Vice President at Hutchinson Shockey Erley & Co. The 22-member SCI-Arc Board is chaired by land-use attorney Jerry Neuman, who stated that “as our school has grown into and is recognized as a world class institution, it is vital that our Board reflect that prominence and both Tanner and Goings bring that level of sophistication to a growing stellar Board.”  The SCI-Arc Board includes noted individuals such as Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne and Kevin Ratner.  The trustees unanimously elected the two new members during their quarterly meeting held June 15 on the school’s recently acquired campus in downtown Los Angeles. 

 “Ted is re-imagining downtown and Russ is re-making the central city—two perfect fits that confirm SCI-Arc’s commitment to the future of Los Angeles as the city of the future,” said SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss.

A noted developer and registered architect, Ted Tanner oversees AEG’s real estate development activities worldwide, including major projects in Los Angeles, London, Berlin and most recently in Asia and Brazil. He has attained more than 30 years of development experience in downtown Los Angeles, as well as 10 prior years working as an architect and a Philadelphia city planner. With AEG, Tanner was responsible for acquiring, entitling and master planning the 40 acres surrounding Staples Center, and for the past 3 years, he has been leading the development of the L.A. Live—a 4-million square foot sports, residential and entertainment development project in downtown Los Angeles valued at more than $2.5 billion—which includes the world-class Nokia Theatre, more than 600,000-square-foot of office space, broadcast studios, restaurants, the Grammy Museum, and the 14-screen Regal Cinema flagship. His team has recently completed the $1 billion 54-story, 1,001-room hotel operated by JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton, as well as 224 luxury Ritz-Carlton Residences. Tanner also managed development of AEG’s Home Depot Center at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson, California, the Nokia Theatre Times Square in New York City and formulated plans for soccer stadiums in Bridgeview, Chicago and Harrison, New Jersey. Internationally, he led the development of the O2 Arena and Entertainment District in London—and is now undertaking plans for Phase 2 of the O2, as well as the master planning of a new entertainment destination adjacent to the O2 World Arena in Berlin.

Russell L. Goings, III is a veteran of the securities industry, with more than 25 years spent in California public finance. He has transaction experience with a wide range of financing vehicles, including taxable general obligation bonds, benefit assessment bonds, special tax obligations, certificates of participation, industrial development bonds, tax allocation bonds and tax-exempt commercial paper. His investment banking clients have included: the State of California; the cities of Los Angeles, Stockton, Fresno, Compton, Oakland, Richmond, Long Beach, Inglewood and Carson; the counties of Sacramento, San Diego, Contra Costa and Los Angeles; and political subdivisions such as the San Diego Unified Port District, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and World Port of Los Angeles. He is the former president of I.C. Rideau Securities, as well as of LP Charles & Goings, Inc. In addition, he also worked as an investment banker for Lazard Freres & Co., First Southwest Company, First Albany Capital and Cabrera Capital Markets. Goings served on the Mayor’s World Port of Los Angeles Futures Commercial Task Force and is the former Chairman of the Public Finance Subcommittee for Rebuild L.A. He presently serves as a Board Member for the Inner City Education Foundation which operates several charter schools in the City of Los Angeles and is the former Board President of the Watts-Willowbrook Boys and Girls Club.

Southern California Institute of Architecture

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The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) announced today that China-based Hanwha SolarOne Co., Ltd. (Hanwha Solar) made a $350,000 cash gift to the SCI-Arc/Caltech entry to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (U.S. DOE) 2011 Solar Decathlon. This is one of the largest cash sponsorships ever received by a U.S. DOE Solar Decathlon team and the largest corporate sponsorship ever received by SCI-Arc. Hanwha Solar also is providing the solar modules needed to power the SCI-Arc/Caltech team solar home, which is now called the SCI-Arc/Caltech Hanwha Solar CHIP House.

The U.S. DOE Solar Decathlon is an award-winning juried competition that invites university-led teams to design, build and operate solar powered houses that are affordable, energy efficient, and well designed.  “The Decathlon examines new housing typologies, alternative energy sources, and re-imagined technical and material possibilities,” stated SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss. “The subject matter is international, so it’s essential that the global discussion has global financial support.  SCI-Arc welcomes the interest, commitment, and financial support of Hanwha Solar,” added Moss. 

The SCI-Arc/Caltech Hanwha Solar CHIP House was built on the SCI-Arc Campus in Los Angeles and shipped on five large trucks to Washington D.C., where it will be re-assembled in the weeks preceding the Decathlon competition. The house will be on display on the National Mall from September 23 to October 2, 2011, along with 18 other solar-powered houses designed by student teams from around the world. Every house in the competition is required to be net-zero—that is, to use only as much energy as its solar panels can generate.

“We are delighted to be partnering with Hanwha Solar on this important solar project that opens the door to a sustainable future,” noted Harry Atwater, Director of Caltech’s Resnick Sustainability Institute and Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science.

“We are excited about the partnership between the SCI-Arc/Caltech team and Hanwha Solar,” noted the team’s Project Manager Elisabeth Neigert.  “Their generous contribution as our primary sponsor has been transformative to the team in allowing us to complete the project as envisioned.”

Additional sponsors of the SCI-Arc/Caltech team include NREL, Southern California Edison, U.S. Department of Energy, Dow Chemical, Resnick Institute, Peter Cross, Bosch, The Vinyl Institute, Tim and Neda Disney, among others.  For more information, visit www.chip2011.com.

The SCI-Arc/Caltech Solar Decathlon team is the first from Southern California selected for the competition, which is held every other year.

Take a VIDEO WALKTHROUGH of the SCI-Arc/Caltech Hanwha Solar House. 

Southern California Institute of Architecture

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The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) today announced that 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis has been elected a SCI-Arc Trustee.

“Thom Mayne is the quintessential SCI-Arc architect,” said Director Eric Owen Moss. “His addition to the board is indicative of the fact that SCI-Arc continues to re-imagine the content of architecture.”

The Board, chaired by Jerold B. Neuman, elected Mayne at its quarterly board meeting held last week. “Thom is an incredible addition to the team at a time when SCI-Arc is reaching new levels of academic achievement with a Board striving to meet ever increasing levels of excellence.”

A product of the anti-establishment of the 1960s, Mayne was among seven faculty members and approximately forty students who left Cal Poly Pomona in 1972 to create SCI-Arc, “a college without walls.” Since then, he has been a frequent guest, juror, lecturer and generous supporter of the school. As SCI-Arc prepares to turn 40 next year, Mayne’s appointment to the Board of Trustees, effective immediately, complements a series of events that have prompted the school’s growth both physically and programmatically.

Founded as an interdisciplinary and collective practice involved in experimental design and rigorous research, Mayne’s firm, Morphosis Architects, was formed in 1972, the first year of SCI-Arc’s history. With Morphosis, Mayne has been the recipient of 25 Progressive Architecture awards, over 100 American Institute of Architects (AIA) awards and numerous other design recognitions. Under his direction, the firm has been the subject of various group and solo exhibitions. Drawings, furniture, and models produced by Morphosis are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco MOMA; the MAK in Vienna; the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; and the FRAC Centre in France. Some of his best-known commissions include the Caltrans Building in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Federal Building, 41 Cooper Square—The Cooper Union’s new academic building in Manhattan, the Phare Tower in Paris and the FLOAT House—a pre-fabricated housing prototype—in New Orleans.

In addition to co-founding SCI-Arc, Mayne has remained active in academia. He has held teaching positions at Columbia, Yale (Eliel Saarinen Chair in 1991), Harvard Graduate School of Design (Eliot Noyes Chair in 1998), California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, SCI-Arc, Berlage Institute in the Netherlands, the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, and several other international institutions. He is currently a Distinguished Professor in the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

Mayne holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California. He and his wife, Blythe Alison-Mayne, who holds an MBA from the University of California at Los Angeles, make their home in Los Angeles.  

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