Experimental Architecture In Los Angeles

by Aaron Betsky

Experimental Architecture in Los Angeles presents, for the first time, the recent work of twenty-two of the most innovative, creative, and challenging young architects on the West Coast of the United States. Each architect, in one way or another, is the spiritual child of Frank Gehry and of the second generation of California architects, such as Morphosis and Eric Owen Moss, who followed in his footsteps. Gehry expresses his support for this third generation of architects in his introduction to this volume. Each architect or firm--among them Michele Saee, AKS Runo, Josh Schweitzer, Guthrie + Buresh, Koning Eizenberg, and COA--is presented in an individual chapter with lavish illustrations accompanied by a brief outline and analysis of the work. Three critical essays, each addressing a different aspect of these architects' relationship to the West Coast, and to Los Angeles in particular, make this volume an indispensable guide to the latest developments in one of architecture's most exciting centers of activity.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 1992

About the author

Aaron Betsky is an American critic on art, architecture and design. He was the director of Virginia Tech School of Architecture + Design until early 2022.
Trained as an architect and in the humanities at Yale University, he is the author of over a dozen books, including Architecture Matters, Making It Modern, Landscrapers: Building With the Land, Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio, Queer Space, Revelatory Landscapes, and Architecture Must Burn. Internationally known as a lecturer, curator, reviewer and commentator, he writes the blog "Beyond Buildings" for Architect Magazine. Director of the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale, he has also been president and Dean of the School of Architecture at Taliesin (originally the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture), director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2001-2006) the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006-2014), and was founding Curator of Architecture, Design and Digital Projects at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1995-2001). As an unlicensed architect, he worked for Frank O. Gehry and Associates and Hodgetts + Fung. In 2003, he co-curated "Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio" at the Whitney Museum of American Art.