Christopher Hawthorne Lecture The Third Los Angeles

Event Date: 

Thursday, April 28, 2016 - 5:30pm

Event Location: 

  • UCSB Library Special Collections Room

Event Price: 

Always Free

Event Contact: 

Lety Garcia, Outreach Coordinator: 805 893 2951  or lgarcia@museum.ucsb.edu

  • Lecture

Architecture Lecture Series

 

The Third Los Angeles

Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times Architecture Critic, will discuss the emergence
of the Third Los Angeles and what its rise means for the architecture and 
urbanism of Southern California.  There has been much discussion about LA's 
attempts to establish a post-suburban identity in recent years, building train 
lines instead of freeways and apartment towers instead of single-family subdivisions
and giving new attention to its long-neglected public realm.
But it makes more sense to think of three phases of modern LA's civic development, from
the First Los Angeles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (when the city built
an extensive streetcar network and innovative multifamily residential architecture 
by Irving Gill, Richard Neutra and others) to the deeply privatized, car-dominated Second
Los Angeles of the post-war decades and now to the emerging Third Los Angeles.  And while
there are certain lessons the Third LA can learn from the First, in other ways the city
is entering uncharted territory, with growth and immigration both slowing dramatically
and the specter of climate change suggesting a shifting relationship between architecture 
and nature in the city and a new role for the Los Angeles River.