The Omnivorous Eye

California Department of Transportation District 7 Headquarters, Thom Mayne, 2004

Earl's Service, Gilmore Gas Station, Farmers Market

Sean Casey, storm chaser and IMAX director, in front of his Tornado Intercept Vehicle

I think 90% of design research is the act of walking through the world with your eyes open. Today I was reminded of Martin Schall, one of the all-time champions in that department. Schall, called "LA's Intimate Stranger" by the LA Times, has been shooting Los Angeles—mostly our architecture, but also vehicles, street art, and anything else that catches his distinguished eye—since he visited as a tourist in 1966. He makes yearly pilgrimages to our fair city and though he's not known for it even to those close to him, he has become well known here and among urban designers for the detailed, street-level documentation of LA on his web site, you-are-here.com. He's not an architect, photographer or connected to urban design at all. He's a German oil and gas engineer who works on oil rigs in the Persian Gulf. What spare time he has is dedicated to maintaining the web site, and when his boss forces him to take time off, he comes to LA to continue his mission. 

I celebrate his magnificent obsession and invite you to examine the length and breadth of his site—the STARchitects, the Googie, the Transportation, and especially the MAP—with the same attention to detail that he gives our town. You won't be disappointed. 

Have Laser Cutter, Will Build House, Part 2

At Art Center, we've been discussing building student housing for years now. Here's an interesting proposition. It's a wild thought, and one which goes against my (and Art Center's) view that the acres of wild hills that we own around our Ellwood Building should remain untouched, but imagine these little houses perched on that landscape! 

That last link, by the way, is to a photograph on you-are-here.com, a site by German petrochemical engineer Martin Schall, who, to date, has shot 2,360 photographs of Los Angeles over who knows how many vacation visits over the years. An amazing body of work showing a somewhat scary level of devotion to our fair city. There's a story there, I'm sure. Maybe one day I'll find it out.

Have Laser Cutter, Will Build House

Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning / Associate Professor Lawrence Sass and his students designed snap-together laser-cut parts to build a New Orleans shotgun house. Part of the Home Delivery show at the Museum of Modern Art: small houses created with computer-aided design and fabrication. Makes you wonder what they've been doing (how they're spending our money and their time) at FEMA.