ONE: TALK: VARIATE LABS’ MILES KEMP ON DESIGNING INTERACTIVE FUTURES—PROCESS TO PRODUCT

With a long history in architecture and user experience design, Variate Labs is a multidisciplinary design studio in Los Angeles that creates new interactive experiences that excite, connect and engage with people. Over the past five years, Variate has crafted a unique design process that combines digital media, physical space and human interaction with unprecedented results.

TWO: OUTPUT: SERIAL SERIES

Satoru Sugihara with Yasushi Ishida

THREE: DISPLAY: GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE DRAWING COURSES

Woodbury School of Architecture Courses: Design Communications 1 and 2, Visualization 1, 2, 3, 4, Building 4, Diagrammatica, and Spaces & Interfaces

Exhibition date |  May 3-10

Exhibition opening |  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

WUHO | 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028

ARCHITECTURE: A WOMAN’S PROFESSION
Tanja Kullack, editor, features Barbara Bestor, Caroline Bos, Alison Brooks, Elke Delugan-Meissl, Jeanne Gang, Barbara Holzer, Lisa Iwamoto, Regine Leibinger, Farshid Moussari, Fuensanta Nieto, Monica Ponce de Leon, Mary-Ann Ray, Dagmar Richter, Denise Scott Brown, Nasrine Seraji, Yui Tezuka, Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, Jennifer Wolch

Within the architectural profession women are increasingly coming to the fore. To what extent will this shift in relations affect the profession as well as its teaching and therefore its structures, objectives and dialogic content? What is architecture when gender-specific strategies are overcome in the name of complex differentiation? What potential does the approaching paradigm shift hold?

Well-known international female architects report their academic and professional experiences and their visions for the future. Pioneers of the scene, lecturers, and young up-and-coming women have their say. They all hold controversial positions on relevant topics of debate; they demand that matters be rethought. Photo essays and designs illustrate their individual points of view. This is a reference book, a “tool” for the everyday application of young architects; inspiring, optimistic, and sometimes subversive.

FALLOW CITY PROJECT
Berenika Boberska

Fallow City Project is an intervention in the typical fabric of suburbia, in the monoculture of private spaces and cultivated dreams. Taking the current crisis of the suburbs as a chance, and the most extreme situation of Detroit as its site, the project aims to develop new scenarios and new typologies of structures for the emerging fallow cityscapes. The interventions propose more playful and public ways of using or mis-using the suburban forms.

Opening | November 13th, 2011 – 7:00pm
Gallery Hours| Thursday 1–8 p.m. & Friday-Sunday 1–6 p.m.

WUHO | 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028

Freedomland is a case of architectural satire attuned to the present realities of politics and economics. Following both Jefferson and Hamilton, Freedomland is the latest in a long line of visionary plans for American living. It is an experiment in reconciling the seeminglyincompatible needs and desires that define our current economic, environmental, and, most importantly, political climate. In one bold, absurdist move, Freedomland colonizes the super grid that blankets America, attempting in the process to solve every problem, please every citizen. Like the work of a benevolent (or perhaps delusional) dictator, it seeks to accommodate every wish, every desire, no matter how contradictory and to combine them in a master plan that sets out a beautiful, if seemingly naïve, vision for a better and more harmonious world.

In Freedomland then, the American Dream—battered by, even if ultimately responsible for, recent economic events—confronts the reality of increasingly scarce resources; Tea Party populism meets landscape urbanism; communism infiltrates capitalism; consumerist single-family houses construct communalist phalansteries; local produce feeds global markets; and Hamilton’s central authority reconciles with Jefferson’s citizen farmer.

Freedomland is a fiction, of course, a work of architectural satire with no pretense toward implementation. In as much as it is the bastard lovechild of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier—think Broadacre City meets the Ville Contemporaine with a dash of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City thrown in for good measure—there is a key difference. Freedomland is problem seeking not problem solving, diagnostic not prescriptive. It builds its grand vision from the basic, eminently American unit of the single-family house, working up and out by uploading conflicting desires and visions to clarify the issues—socially, environmentally, and, ultimately architecturally—that confront us at this particular moment in time. As in the best satire, stones are thrown not with malice but with great affection and hope.

Opening | Saturday, February 4, 2012 – 6-8 p.m.
Gallery Hours| Thursday 1–8 p.m. & Friday-Sunday 1–6 p.m.

WUHO | 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028

www.unprivilegedviews .org

Opening | Saturday, March 3, 2012.
Exhibition|  Saturday, March 3, 2012-March 25, 2012

WUHO | 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028

co-curated by Eric Olsen, Keith Mitnik

 Come join the Woodbury School of Architecture and James Rojas at Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery (WUHO). Re-envision the neighborhood with the Hollywood Urban Planning Pop-Up Shop, featuring workshops and an interactive urban diorama by James Rojas, with construction help from Woodbury School of Architecture students.

The Hollywood Urban Planning Shop is a community engagement project that critiques the design of cities today by asking the public to re-imagine Hollywood. The question every Pop-Up Shop visitor must ask his or herself is, “What would Hollywood look like if we rebuilt it today?”  The project harnesses the power of the collective community imagination to create an interactive diorama of Hollywood, as it could be. Residents, tourists, visitors—the public—will reflect on, explore, experiment, and ultimately craft their image of a city.

The more than 30-foot long model is made out of foam core, metal window screen, moss, construction paper, and other found materials, which represent the built features of Hollywood. Sized to graphically demonstrate the urban scale, the model depicts Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards as they run westward from the Barnsdall House at Vermont Avenue to the northern end of Fairfax Avenue. Wood blocks, tile, jewelry, plastic game pieces, and other available materials constitute the conceptual representation of built form. Iconic structures, such as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Capitol Records, and the Arc Light, are detailed and painted to mirror the actual landmarks and to provide context. Visitors are encouraged to interact with the model and move the buildings around, departing from the current skyline. Participants rearrange, rebuild, and place the structures anywhere in the geography.

The interactive diorama creates a powerful tool to bring together all ages, races and genders to participate in creating a vision for the future of Hollywood. Returning the city builders back to the sand box means there are no wrong or right impulses. Participants inspire each other with their vision of Hollywood.

About James Rojas

James Rojas is an urban planner, community activist, and artist. He is one of the few nationally recognized urban planners to examine U.S. Latino cultural influences on urban design. He holds a Master of City Planning and a Master of Science of Architecture Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His influential thesis on the Latino built environment has been widely cited.

Rojas founded the Latino Urban Forum (LUF), a volunteer advocacy group, dedicated to understanding and improving the built environment of Los Angeles’ Latino communities. LUF has recruited urban planners, architects, artists, and public administrators to lend their knowledge and influence to innovate and address the issues of the underserved, and often underprivileged, Latino communities of Los Angeles.

Rojas’ method to engage youth, immigrants, and women in the urban planning process has been highly successful and replicated. He has facilitate over 150 interactive workshops and created over 43 interactive urban diorama across the country. He has collaborated with municipalities, non-profits, educational institutions, museums and galleries to educate the public on urban planning.

Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery (WUHO)

WUHO is Woodbury University’s center for experimental exhibitions and multi-disciplinary collaborations. The gallery is shared with the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. Located on the iconic Hollywood Walk-of-Fame, WUHO is a gallery, event space, and lecture venue.

Opening | Sunday January 22^nd, 2012 – 2:00pm
Gallery Hours| Thursday 1–8 p.m. & Friday-Sunday 1–6 p.m.

WUHO | 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028

What are the likely parameters of a future possibility?

What can past conjectures tell us of our future?

Where do the design opportunities lie?

Opening | Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 – 7:00pm

WUHO | 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028

an installation by over,under