Dialogues and Interventions: Recent Architecture Pasadena to L.A.
Opening reception, Friday, June 9, 7–9 p.m.
June 10 – September 3
Organized by John R. Dale, a past president of AIA Los Angeles, with Jan Furey Muntz, AIA, as assistant curator, Dialogues and Interventions explores a wave of new architecture in and around Pasadena and the Arroyo Seco. All of these projects respond to preexisting contexts that are natural, architectural or a combination of both. The architectural firms included in the show have their practice in California. The exhibition opens during the American Institute of Architects' National Convention in downtown Los Angeles.
The architectural firms and building projects represented in the exhibition are: John Dale, AIA, with Aleks Istanbullu Architects, Grace Chapel and Cleaver Hall, Church of Our Saviour, San Gabriel; Daly Genik Architects, Art Center College of Design South Campus, Pasadena; EHDD Architecture, The Audubon Center at Debs Park, Los Angeles; Hodgetts + Fung Design and Architecture, Sinclaire Pavilion, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena; Michael Maltzan Architecture, Kidspace Children's Museum, Pasadena; Marmol Radziner + Associates, Hilltop Studio, Pasadena; MDA Johnson Favaro, The Shops on South Lake Avenue, Pasadena; Moule and Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists, Del Mar Station Transit-Oriented Development, Pasadena; and Pugh + Scarpa Architects, W.P. Fuller Building, Los Angeles.
Through adaptation and renovation, contrast or harmonization, the new architecture represented in this exhibition is a thougtful and inventive dialogue between old and new. These projects represent ways of weaving old and new together to create an environment that is simultaneously coherent yet heterogeneous, aware of the past yet resolutely in the present.
John Dale, AIA, and Aleks Istanbullu Architects’ Grace Chapel and Cleaver Hall were designed to integrate into a more than 100-year-old church campus with heritage trees. Daly Genik Architects transformed an old wind tunnel complex in Pasadena into Art Center College of Design’s South Campus. EHDD’s Audubon Center at Debs Park in the Arroyo Seco is an environmentally “green” building unified into the landscape. Hodgetts + Fung’s Sinclaire student pavilion at Arts Center College of Design hillside campus in Pasadena relates to and contrasts with the original Craig Ellwood Art Center building. Michael Maltzan’s Kidspace Children’s Museum in Pasadena combines a historic botanical garden complex with new architectural structures. Marmol Radziner + Associates sensitively renovated architect Thornton Ladd’s 1950s Hilltop Studio in Pasadena. MDA Johnson Favaro designed an extensive retail block on Lake Avenue in Pasadena around the historic Bullock’s (now Macy’s) Department Store originally designed by architect Welton Beckett. Moule and Polyzoides’ Del Mar Station Transit-Oriented Development in Pasadena is a mixed-use project incorporating a Gold Line station. Pugh + Scarpa are transforming the old Fuller Paint Building near the Avenue 23/Cypress Park Gold Line station into cooperative housing.
The exhibition is documented by a combined print and DVD catalogue, with color reproductions and texts about each architectural project and firm. The DVD includes edited interviews with the firms conducted by Frances Anderton of KCRW radio, a noted journalist in architecture and design. The catalogue is distributed by Balcony Press, a national publisher of architecture books located in Southern California. The catalogue is being sold for $25.
Gwynne Pugh of Pugh + Scarpa has developed an Introduction to Architecture class for high school students that will take place at the Armory three Saturday afternoons in July. John Dale, Craig Hodgetts, and Aleks Istanbullu will serve as guest instructors. For more information, please call the Armory’s Registrar at 626.792.5101 x 121.
Major funding for this exhibition and publication is provided by the Pasadena Art Alliance. Additional funding has been provided by Harley Ellis Devereaux, ARC, Ford Graphics, and Urban Partners, LLC. On view in the Caldwell Gallery