Christopher Hawthorne Lecture The Third Los Angeles

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.